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The House of Dornell 



The 

House of Dornell 

Ills terrarum mihi praeter omnes angulus ridet 


By 

Fergus Graham 

i' 

Author of 

“ Kathleen ” “ Tommy and a Tower ” 



NEW YORK 

DODD , MEAD AND COMPANY 
1912 


PS 3S13 

.R.slk 

IH2 

C io p y £ 


Copyright, 1912, by 
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 


Published February, 1912 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 


I 

Friendships and Gardens 

i 

II 

The House of Dornell 

12 

III 

Cynthia 

• 23 

IV 

At Break of Day . 

• 34 

V 

Cairnan 

• 46 

VI 

The Kind One 

• 57 

VII 

Miss Moreland . 

. 68 

VIII 

In the Dusk 

• 79 

IX 

The Colonel 

• 90 

X 

Guarded Treasures 

. 101 

XI 

TheScratcher 

. hi 

XII 

Little Cupid . 

. 122 

XIII 

The Dogs of Dornell . 

• 133 

XIV 

Robert 

• 144 

XV 

The Vale of Tempe 

• 155 

XVI 

Cousin Ann . 

. 166 

XVII 

Habits and Customs 

• 179 

XVIII 

Mysteries . 

. 189 

XIX 

Cupid Triumphant 

. 200 

XX 

Farewell 

. 212 


The House of Dome l l 



I 


FRIENDSHIPS AND GARDENS 

I WONDER if to you the title of this open- 
ing chapter seems as appropriate as it does 
to me? Friendships and gardens. The 
words belong to one another, and each 
suggests the other; wherefore I have tried 
to put down on paper some of the scenes 
that rise before me when I think of a 
garden and friends we both have known. 
Illusive stuff these memories are, illusive 
as patches of sunlight, and as difficult to 
capture for the purposes of a tale; still, 
they are spots of real brightness, and 
as such worthy to be chronicled, not only 
for your refreshment and mine, but for the 
pleasure of those who would with us 
snatch a few moments from the business 
of life to walk in green alleys and among 

i 


The House of D or n el l 

flowers. We have both been gardeners in 
our leisure time, and with the plants we 
tended the little seedling of friendship 
has grown up and flourished. That is why 
I have chosen this title for my first page, 
and because it will appeal to you who 
always loved a garden, so that while you 
read, the half-forgotten incidents will 
come back to you, fresh and distinct, like 
the fragrance from the flower-beds in July. 

I can see you nicely critical as you scan 
these pages; smiling sometimes at a famil- 
iar touch you recognise, or frowning at 
a trick of memory that has let you forget 
so much, while I remember. But it was 
never quite the same for you as it was for 
me, because you lived these scenes and 
moved among them as an actor, whereas 
I came on them from outside. Thus the 
things you met as every-day occurrences, 
were to me choice morsels, very gems of 
happenings. 


2 


Friendships and Gardens 

Just a few of these impressions I have 
written about, not selected for any special 
merit they may possess above others, but 
rather drawn by chance from the pile that 
lies within the cupboard of my memory. 
Some of the papers are a little dusty, per- 
haps; some of the writing a little dim, 
but you who shared with me those pleas- 
ant days will see no dust nor dimness 
when you cast your eyes back upon one 
picture or another, and the colours that 
a pen cannot make evident will touch them 
all in the soft light that recollection 
brings. 

You may be critical with justice, seeing 
the material is so rich in possibilities, and 
doubtless I have missed the best that might 
have been recorded. Still, let me remind 
you again: this is illusive stuff to handle, 
and atmosphere is hard to reproduce in 
type. The bottled essence has not the 
true bouquet of the rose, neither has 
3 


The House of D or n ell 

a tale, however subtilely planned, 
the same flavour as real life. Never- 
theless, our imaginations can be caught 
by both, so that we smell the roses 
and live ourselves in the tale that is 
written. 

I was reading, the other day, a quaint 
“ Essay on Friendships” (after the manner 
of Goldsmith) and in it romantic friend- 
ships were particularly condemned. The 
author (whose name I have been unable 
to discover) had arranged and classified 
friends, like plants, under different head- 
ings, with a description, for the most part 
damnatory, of each. Thus The Timid 
Friend, exemplified by one Bill Sensi- 
tive, has a good disposition, but is under 
perpetual alarm lest his benevolence 
should get him into a scrape. The words 
“ You will oblige me very much,” put him 
immediately into a fever, and “ I come 
to ask your assistance,” throws him into 
4 


Friendships and Gardens 

a perfect agony. The author very rightly 
observes that such a friend is contemptible 
and useless. On the other hand, The Red 
Hot Friend is not a jot more valuable than 
the last. He is all bluster, but usually 
cools before he comes to the point, and 
leaves you in the lurch when you had 
reason to expect everything of his protes- 
tations. But The Romantic Friend is 
worse than either of these. He is a pleas- 
ing companion in the hour of distress, but 
the consolation he offers is not true. It 
accords with our errors as it pities our 
sufferings, and instead of making us sac- 
rifice at the altars of Wisdom and Pru- 
dence, leads us into fresh absurdities which 
the manners of the world will not acknowl- 
edge. 

There was a time when I myself cher- 
ished some liking for the idea of a roman- 
tic friendship, but since learning of its 
snares and pitfalls, I have relinquished 
5 


The House of Dornell 

the desire, and am content to be a friend, 
without qualification, to those who seek 
my company. It is true enough that the 
world will not tolerate romantic friend- 
ships. When simple folk become men of 
the world, the romantic part of their inter- 
course degenerates into a motley, unintelli- 
gible thing that many people call friend- 
ship. Therefore, if we wish to enjoy a 
spice of romance, a flavour of simplicity 
in our daily intercourse, we must culti- 
vate our friendships in a garden, or in 
a quiet place where no sacrifices at 
the altar of Wisdom or Prudence are de- 
manded. 

Sentimentalism is, I think, the word 
we want to banish from our idea of friend- 
ship, not romance, and in a garden there 
is always a strain of the last. We cannot 
sigh and be sentimental over every flower 
that withers, or moralise upon the fleet- 
ing glories of our tulip borders. There 
6 


Friendships and Gardens 

are weeds to be pulled and seeds to be 
sown, and a hundred practical matters 
to be attended to that will keep our minds 
healthy and our muscles hard. Romance 
is quite a different thing. Without ro- 
mance we should plant in straight rows, 
and miss the charm of contrast between 
the brilliant beds and leafy shrubbery 
walks. Worst of all, we should have no 
feeling for the past, which is made up of 
romance in an old garden. The white 
seat beneath the rose-trellis would not set 
us dreaming of old fashions, and we 
should put a carpet bedding of stiff de- 
sign where the gillyflowers and marigolds 
now flourish. 

We are no sentimentalists, nor are we 
cynics, though it is a satisfaction sometimes 
to sneer at the world’s conception of a 
friend. Our own friends, at Dornell, 
would not suffer us to become cynics, how- 
ever strongly we were tempted by the 
7 


The House of D or n ell 

world, because here, at least, we have an 
atmosphere of perfect candour and sin- 
cerity, which acts as a potent antidote 
against unwholesome reflections. The 
mere breath of it keeps our heart fresh. 
So may it be with this book when our 
comrades have passed out into the world. 
Keep it on the shelf at your own particular 
corner of the fireside, within reach of 
your hand wh^n the sky seems overcast and 
the wind blows chilly. Then, at such 
times, may you find in its pages that which 
will make you smile, and set you on a 
pleasant train of memories. 

This is no philosophic essay on the bene- 
fits of friendship; the state itself is good 
enough without an appended lecture to 
enhance the fact, and philosophic ponder- 
ings are more suited to the chimney-cor- 
ner, than to garden walks. I cannot call 
to mind where our friendship began: in a 
railway train, on a steamboat, or in a 
8 


Friendships and Gardens 

garden. It might have been anywhere, 
and detail is of no account. We were 
sprawling under trees when first I recog- 
nised it, and it will last, mayhap, long 
after the leaves have fallen before the blast 
of winter gales. In the meantime it is 
summer weather, and the fields lie dappled 
in their gold and green expanses betwixt 
us and the river. I am back again at Dor- 
nell; I can see again the house, and lawns 
and pine-clad hills; I can smell the 
sweetness of the flower borders, and hear 
laughter in the big saloon. Is this senti- 
ment, or romance? A touch of both I 
fancy, and the one harms not the other in 
the just proportion of their mingling. But 
those moral and philosophic reflections 
rise, even as I greet you smiling. It is 
the fault of old books that I have been 
reading, musty old books in which staid 
folk have written essays (after the manner 
of Goldsmith) upon friendships. Roman- 
9 


The House of Dornell 

tic friends, I am content that we should 
remain, and our sacrifice to Wisdom and 
Prudence shall be an hour or two, and our 
altar the sun-dial. 

So much for your garden and friend- 
ship. You are the philosopher, I the idler, 
and were a sacrifice needed, it surely 
should come from me. But this book is 
no burnt offering for atonement, no obla- 
tion before Wisdom’s altar. It is just a 
sheaf of memories from a garden dropped, 
like a handful of flowers, upon your study 
table. 

Philosophic reflections I shall leave to 
you, then. In your chair before the fire 
you may philosophise to your heart’s con- 
tent, or fall asleep and drop my volume 
in the ashes. I only touch these themes 
with a light pen that goes trippingly, as 
our child comrades used to go, round 
about and through The House of Dornell. 
So be not too critical as you read, and 


io 


Friendships and Gardens 

when you close the book may it be with 
some regret, and with a feeling that your 
friend has, in a happy moment, caught the 
spirit of a place you love. 


ITT 


II 


THE HOUSE OF DORNELL 

IT is an old-world house on a gentle slope, 
looking across fields of chequered green 
to a broad river and low, wooded hills be- 
yond. I can picture it at any season of 
the year, with always a quaint charm of 
its own; but I like best to think of it in 
summer, late summer, when the trees are 
full of leaf, and the first tints of gold 
are on the barley fields. It must be even- 
ing, too, so that the pines on the high 
ground toward the west stand out clear 
against the flamingo tones of the sky, and 
the cedars on the lawn fling long shadows 
to touch the old, stone sun-dial. On a 
summer evening there is a subtle charm 
about the house, and a warmth of atmos- 
phere that strikes one as pleasant and home- 


12 


The House of Dornell 

like, and to see the place at such a time 
is like encountering a familiar, human 
friend, whose greeting bids us welcome. 
Dornell has nothing vast or stately in its 
outlines, nothing imposing; it has just a 
simple dignity of its own that fits old walls 
and an air of by-gone years. It is one of 
the world’s rare sanctuaries, a bit of the 
still past left amidst the modern turmoil 
of factory smoke and clanging engines. 

Tall chimneys can be seen from the 
House of Dornell, trails of smoke above 
the trees, and at night, the glow of dis- 
tant furnaces makes lurid blots against the 
sky. These are evidences of what is; here 
are the lingering tokens of what was, and 
the echoes of the present come mellowed 
across the woods and lawns, a faint hum 
to mingle with the droning of the bees. 
The wheels of time are checked within 
the gates of Dornell, and the feverish 
haste of living slackens to a gentler pace. 

13 


The House of Dornell 

This is not the world in which we hurry 
to and fro; this is a world of dreams and 
sweetness, and of many memories. There 
are stone steps to the door, grey steps worn 
by the feet of generations past and gone, 
and lichen-bound in the crevices between 
the flags. Along the front of the house 
are flower-beds, and beyond them a gravel 
square, bounded by smooth turf. East and 
west spread shady pleasure-grounds, and 
to the north the cultivated lands rise to 
meet a line of purple mountains. So much 
for the setting. 

Inside the house are long, narrow pas- 
sages, quaint, stone stairs, rooms opening 
into one another, and the big saloon. The 
big saloon is my favourite room at Dor- 
nell, and it is entered direct from the steps 
outside. It is a family gathering-place, 
the centre to which we gravitate at certain 
hours of the day, a starting-point from 
which we set forth each morning. I have 

14 


The House of Dorn ell 

a particular affection for the saloon when 
we congregate there on an afternoon for 
tea; when the tall doors are open, and 
the scent of flowers comes in to mingle 
with the perfume of dried rose-leaves in 
the china jars. There is a homely air 
about the tea-table, which is chiefly due to 
the presence of a brown teapot that has 
existed as long as I can remember Dornell. 
The brown teapot and the cherry jam; 
both are inseparably connected in my mind 
with placid afternoons at Dornell, and if 
the teapot appeals to my graver time of 
life, it is to be a boy again only to taste 
that jam! 

But the big saloon would lack its special 
attraction, and Dornell its pleasantest 
memories, were it not for My Lady. She 
is the central figure of a group I love to 
contemplate, the gentle power that makes 
its influence felt throughout the day, and 
draws us, a contented circle, round the 
i5 


The House of Dornell 
brown teapot when she makes our tea. 
I always think of My Lady as ministering 
to somebody, and her ministrations gen- 
erally take the form of feeding the hungry, 
because there are three perpetually hun- 
gry persons at Dornell: The Baa-lamb, The 
Beloved and Cynthia; three outwardly 
angelic forms in constant need of sus- 
tenance. 

The Baa-lamb, The Beloved and Cyn- 
thia. Three yellow heads in a row. Dor- 
nell would be something less than it is 
without you; a little of its charm would 
be wanting, though your ways are not 
those in keeping with romance, and the 
peacefulness of life might drift to insi- 
pidity. Those children are the sprites of 
Dornell, the lively-footed elves that flit 
through the old, quiet rooms like gleams 
of sunlight. Their laughter and their 
mischief run, like ripples upon still water, 
along the placid surface of our existence. 

1 6 


The House of Do rnell 

I love to be tormented by the children, 
and they love to torment me, which is the 
reason why we are such excellent friends. 
If they ceased to use me as a sort of over- 
grown toy, I should feel that my popu- 
larity was on the wane, and that my posi- 
tion as a favoured one at Dornell was 
imperilled; on this account I bear much 
buffeting, and in return have gained three 
staunch and loyal allies. The friendship 
of those three, The Baa-lamb, The Beloved 
and Cynthia, is a possession I am proud of 
and cling to jealously. It tickles my con- 
ceit, too, that they should choose me for 
a friend, and the honour of being one is 
worth a few sore ribs. The mystic realm 
called the child-world is no foreign land 
to me, because three of my best comrades 
dwell there, comrades I would not ex- 
change for the dozen wisest heads that 
ever wagged. 

Then as for comfort when the mind is 
i7 


The House of D or n ell 

troubled, give me a child’s sympathy; the 
sympathy of such a one as you, Cynthia 
of the golden locks. How often have I 
seen, in your eyes of most expressive blue, 
an understanding of that which I have 
thought to keep hidden within myself. 
I have caught that look many times when 
you guessed that I was sad, and I have 
been grateful, though you did not know it. 
It is the inestimable gift of woman’s sym- 
pathy, my dear, that makes you quick to 
comprehend, and I forgive the bruise you 
made upon my shins. Only one condition 
do I exact; that you keep those eyes un- 
changed for the sorrows of the world in 
years to come. 

Children put me in mind of a garden: 
they are like the flowers in the garden 
at Dornell, very bright and full of fra- 
grance, and I love the garden next to them. 

It is old-fashioned, sweet and slumber- 
ous; a harmony in tones and comely forms, 
18 


The House of Dornell 

a melody set to the music of changing 
seasons, with the refrain of summer domi- 
nant among the notes. Spring with the 
song of birds and the pink of apple- 
blossom is a delicate prelude, and as the 
weeks pass the music swells into a full 
chorus of delight. What a riot of colour 
July brings to the long herbaceous plots! 
How they glow with the splendour of 
wide open blooms! Delphiniums, blue as 
the sky, sweet-peas of every shade from 
crimson to the palest buff; carnations, 
splashes of the scarlet poppy, the stately 
purity of the Madonna lily, and — roses. 
There are roses everywhere. The old 
moss-rose near the gate, the delicate teas 
in their own special bed, the yellow briar, 
and hedges of dark Provence roses that 
bound the long green walk. This walk 
bisects the garden, and its formal lines 
are quaint and rather pleasing, in the 
midst of the flower-borders and apple-trees 
19 


The House of D or n ell 

that hem it in. It imparts a touch of 
dignity to the garden, and a flavour of 
primness that seems appropriate in such 
a place. The grass is always kept well 
rolled and closely cut, so that there is 
some suggestion of a bowling-alley, were 
it not for a stone sun-dial, which destroys 
the effect while adding a charm of its own 
to the broad, green stretch of turf. A 
curved bench, white and formal as one 
might expect, stands at the top of the 
walk. It is flanked by two strange box- 
trees, shaped like birds, and behind it is 
a trellis up which climb crimson ramblers 
— crimson ramblers that refuse to be for- 
mal, and that drop their clusters of blos- 
som upon the back rails of the curved, 
white seat. 

There is a summer-house at Dornell, 
but I prefer the white seat in the garden. 
There is a little Cupid on the summer- 
house, but I prefer the lily-beds. Lilies 


20 


The House of Dornell 

and roses about the throne of summer, 
and if Cupid wanders here he keeps him- 
self well hid, pouting for lack of game, 
while Cynthia and The Baa-lamb race each 
other round the sun-dial. As for me, I 
occupy the throne of summer; an autumn 
leaf blown there by mistake, and I feel 
both old and withered, till the children, 
growing tired of racing, come and sit 
beside me. Then I feel young again. 

Cynthia’s eyes get dreamy as she looks 
across the garden, and I should like to 
compare notes with her on the subject of 
dreams; but The Baa-lamb will not allow 
her to stay quiet long. He does some- 
thing, says something, to waken Cynthia 
from her pensive mood, and the next in- 
stant I am involved in a brawl. Not a 
serious brawl, but any sort of brawl seems 
so indecorous on the throne of summer 
that I take to flight down the long, green 
walk, followed by the children with shouts 


21 


The House of Dornell 

that wake the sleeping dogs, and bring 
them from the shade to join in the pur- 
suit. I know I shall shortly have to jump 
a flower-bed, and most probably spoil the 
poetry of nature by sitting in a delphinium 
clump. But what of that? I would 
rather gambol like a puppy-dog, and fling 
my heels across the turf than think of 
autumn and withered leaves in this sum- 
mer garden at Dornell. 


22 


Ill 


CYNTHIA 

If I were writing a novel I should make 
my heroine like Cynthia; Cynthia grown 
up as I can picture her. It is a fascinating 
idea, but all the same, I must confess to 
preference for my heroine as she is — a 
little girl of ten. Cynthia herself would 
scorn the notion of being a heroine, or any- 
thing else of a sentimental nature, because 
her own conceptions of the heroic are 
those of a school-boy, and her pattern a 
glorified edition of her brothers. The 
Baa-lamb and The Beloved show a good- 
humoured sort of toleration for Cynthia 
as a girl, and take their own superiority 
as a matter of course. It has never en- 
tered their heads that the humble efforts 
of a sister may some day cause her to over- 

23 


The House of Dornell 

take them, and pass them on the road they 
strut along so proudly. Yet, were I asked 
to name the bravest and the finest of the 
three, I should without hesitation give 
the first place to Cynthia. In the matter 
of moral bravery she outstrips the boys, 
and physically she is their equal in almost 
everything. But it is the moral pluck of 
Cynthia that most appeals to me; I can 
understand that pride would forbid her to 
cry out when she is hurt, and fear of 
ridicule restrain her from the natural 
howls of pain; but the command she has 
over her inner feelings when they are 
touched is always a wonder to me in so 
small and young a person. I sometimes 
think it must be the result of long practice, 
combined with an uncommon gift for 
self-abnegation, and if that be so, Cynthia 
is a heroine now, without waiting till she 
is grown up. 

If The Baa-lamb or The Beloved desires 

24 


Cynthia 

a thing — which they are not allowed to 
have — we in the house know all about 
it, and the injustice of denial is noised 
loudly in the passages. There is a terribly 
injured expression on The Beloved’s face 
when his will is thwarted, and the haughty 
aspect of The Baa-lamb fills us with an 
uncomfortable suspicion that we are in 
reality cold and cruel criminals. That 
is the annoying characteristic of both The 
Baa-lamb and The Beloved. One can- 
not punish them without feeling that the 
true criminal is oneself, and the sneaking 
desire to propitiate takes away all sense 
of satisfaction in having done one’s duty. 
The only way to recover self-respect is, 
with set purpose, to commit an act of 
reprehensible indulgence. 

In the case of Cynthia it is different. 
She says nothing, whatever she may feel, 
and on this account, so illogical are the 
laws by which we reason, it is generally 
25 


The House of Dornell 

believed that Cynthia does not care. 
When she is deeply moved she goes for a 
walk with the dogs, and I have met her, 
a pathetic little figure with scratched 
knees, returning home from such an ex- 
pedition, and because I know Cynthia I, 
too, pretend that there is nothing wrong. 

Tough little Cynthia with hair the col- 
our of ripe corn. One would never gues9 
how tough she is to look at her, for in re- 
pose she is not unlike The Blessed Damo- 
zel; a fragile dream-child to be guarded 
from the rough winds of the world. But 
her moments of repose are few, and the re- 
semblance passes whenever she begins to 
move. She becomes a sprite, an elfin 
thing, all legs and arms; a vivid bit of 
colour in the sunshine, crowned by a flow- 
ing, yellow mane. The poetry of motion 
is not for Cynthia, no more than is the 
poetry of romance. She scorns both with 
all her heart, and prefers to turn somer- 
2 6 


Cynthia 

sets, or proceed by leaps and bounds. Her 
progress through the world has more of 
the whirlwind than of poetry in it, and 
those who have only seen her in the re- 
straining garb and atmosphere of cere- 
mony, an ethereal vision, The Blessed 
Damozel with eyes that seem to look 
straight out from Heaven, have no notion 
of the scudding elf, flashing bare knees 
beneath a kilt, the aurora borealis of her 
clan. She is a tempestuous person, wild 
as the heather on the hills, and her knees 
are generally scratched. Still, I love her, 
and what is more, she loves me; in a 
shamefaced sort of way, it is true, but 
faithfully for all that. We are lovers in 
a simple, childish sense; lovers in the 
present, without a future or a past to 
trouble us. In fact, ours is an ideal state 
could it only last, and up till now we have 
no thought of parting. Cynthia is ten, and 
I — am envious when I watch her turning 
27 


The House of Dornell 

somersets. Cynthia is my sweetheart. 
I mentioned the fact to Little Cupid on the 
summer-house; but he was very scornful 
and turned his back on me. I suppose he 
thinks it a waste of time, a lamentable 
waste of time, because to him love is a 
business and no joke. Our trifling seems 
ridiculous to him, being all make-belief 
and play, still to Cynthia and me the 
arrangement is altogether satisfactory. It 
gives us a proprietary right in each other, 
a right to sympathise with one another on 
various occasions, and if that sympathy is 
merely expressed in a glance, it still gives 
us comfortable assurance that each under- 
stands the other. 

Cupid may look as scornful as he likes. 
We do not care, and I know it is because 
he cannot make targets of us for his 
arrows that the god of love affects dis- 
dain. It is not often one can best Little 
Cupid, or dare to take liberties with him, 
28 


Cynthia 

and it is only for such a couple as we 
are to laugh at his arrows. Cynthia and 
I make a perfect combination of defence 
against Cupid, and my ally is quite uncon- 
scious of the fact. She has no knowledge 
of Cupid as a god, therefore she is not 
afraid of him. To her he is simply a little 
figure on the summer-house, and were he 
removed from his perch she would not 
miss him. Never mind, Little Cupid. 
There are plenty of grown maidens in the 
world, and men too, glad to offer them- 
selves up for sacrifice. They will tremble 
and show you proper respect; so be con- 
tent with them, and do not grudge me 
Cynthia in the garden at Dornell. 

I call her my sweetheart, sometimes, 
when we are alone. It would not do to 
let her brothers hear me, because they are 
incapable of seeing anything but food for 
mirth in such an idea. They would con- 
sider it a prime joke, or be very con- 
29 


The House of Dornell 

temptuous, and in any case they would 
torment Cynthia till she “ went for them,” 
which might spoil the beauty of our fair 
romance. No, we must keep its glamour 
untarnished by tears, its silver course un- 
sullied by vulgar brawls. Cynthia has 
in her a strain of artistic feeling 
that extends to matters sentimental, and 
sentiment touches the latent woman in 
her. It is a new and delicate growth, this 
budding consciousness of sex, and the 
feeling that it is weakness to acknowledge 
it makes her prompt with feet and fists. 
The boys are her heroes, yet they are 
boys and brothers. She watches them for 
the least provocation. 

Somebody remarked to me, not long 
ago, that Cynthia was most kissable. The 
same person complained subsequently that 
the child was unresponsive, and indeed 
Cynthia is woefully unresponsive to those 
who caress at sight. To the habitual 
30 


Cynthia 

smiler upon children she appears too 
sedate for her age; but it is only because 
her independence and sense of decency 
are outraged by the caresses of a stranger 
in public. She also hates being called a 
little girl, and being asked how she is 
getting on with her lessons; but she is 
never rude to guests in the house, only 
unresponsive. Those who know her best 
understand that her nature revolts from 
soft handling, and that after being kissed 
by her mother’s visitors she flies off to 
be roughly tumbled by those imperfect 
knights, The Baa-lamb and The Beloved, 
as a sort of purifying exercise after the 
restraint of company manners. Never- 
theless, there are times when Cynthia is 
responsive — when she is sure that nobody 
will laugh — and in gentle mood, she is 
most captivating. Animals see her in 
this mood more often than do human 
beings, and all the dogs about Dornell are 
3i 


The House of D or n el l 

her devoted slaves. Next to the dogs she 
favours old men and women, who con- 
fide their long lists of ailments to her. 
The more ailments they possess the more 
attractive are they to Cynthia, and she 
is a mine of information on the subject of 
Rheumatism and its treatment. It would 
be worth while to be old and infirm, just 
for the sake of being visited by Cynthia; 
but I fear those aged ones she goes to see 
are more interested in the soup she brings 
than in her. I know they grievously re- 
sent her following of dogs. But Cynthia 
has endless patience and compassion for 
the sick and sorry of this world, be they 
men or dogs, and it is in ministering to 
them that she drops the defensive armour 
of independence and appears as she is — 
a sweet and gentle woman, a true-hearted 
friend, and — a heroine. 

Sometimes, of an evening, we wander 
across the lawn, Cynthia and I, till we find 
32 


Cynthia 

ourselves in the old garden. There we sit 
down and dream a while, on the white 
seat beneath the red rose trellis that stands 
at the top of the long, green walk. The 
sun-dial throws a shadow on the grass, the 
air is very still, and through the trees a 
line of hills beyond the river shows clear 
and dark against the evening sky. I won- 
der what Cynthia is dreaming about? But 
the dream, whatever it is, comes to an 
end very soon, for the boys have found us. 
Cynthia wakes, The Baa-lamb rouses me, 
and together we wake the echoes as, arms 
linked and four abreast, we dance our 
shadows down the long, green walk. 


33 


IV 


AT BREAK OF DAY 

WHEN the morning sun strikes through 
the window blinds and the fresh sounds 
of the morning rise from the harvest fields 
behind the House of Dornell, somewhere 
about half-past seven, the day begins for 
me with a descent in force by The Baa- 
lamb and The Beloved. Half-asleep, just 
enough awake to know that I am com- 
fortable, and that laziness is very good, 
I hear the scampering of bare feet along 
the passage, and the door opens to admit 
three visitors. When first I came to Dor- 
nell My Lady advised me to lock my bed- 
room door and take the key inside. I 
did not understand why, and so neglected 
her warning; but I have found out since, 
34 


At Break of Day 

and suffered as those do who insist upon 
learning from experience. The key is 
lost now; I think The Baa-lamb has it, but 
he only smiles when I inquire. Every 
morning these three visitors arrive; the 
Baa-lamb, who has nothing lamb-like in 
his composition, The Beloved, more suit- 
ably named and — Don. Two humans and 
a dog, two cherubs and a flea-bag, two 
demons and a microbe-trap, according as 
my mood prompts imagination. But it 
makes no difference what one calls them; 
they come just the same, smiling, friendly, 
merciless. There is no escape, and — well, 
since I did not secure the key in time, it 
is entirely my own fault. 

The Baa-lamb is a naval officer from 
Osborne, who writes R.N. after his name, 
and wears a stripe, indicative of authority, 
on his right arm, but he is a wicked imp, 
for all that, worthy of many stripes. How 
he got the name of Baa-lamb I cannot 
35 


The House of D or n ell 

guess, and it is not safe to inquire at 
this time of the morning, when I can be 
had so easily at a disadvantage. I feel 
my unprotected position and huddle be- 
neath the clothes. The Baa-lamb leads 
the way across the room with a run and 
a jump that lands him fair on the middle 
of my chest, from which he bounds off to 
make way for The Beloved, who is 
lighter, more gentle by nature, and there- 
fore less painful. It takes them a few 
moments to settle themselves (I having 
been settled at the first assault) and then 
they remember Don, who has no desire to 
share my bed, but who is dragged up 
by the scruff of his neck, till he comes to 
rest upon my midriff as a permanency. 
Good, faithful Don! His tongue hangs 
out, and he blinks his eyes close to my face, 
as though to explain that this is not his 
fault, and that he would really be far 
happier on the floor, scratching his ears 
36 


At Break of Day 

in peace. However, here he is, and The 
Baa-lamb, and the Beloved. As for 
me, I am merely a pedestal for Don, 
a buffer between the fists and feet of his 
masters. 

The Beloved would not hurt a fly. I 
have been assured that he would not, and 
I believe it; so it must be because I am 
not a fly that he takes such pains to find 
the tenderest places among my ribs. And 
all the time he looks like an angel, a being 
of superior clay to ordinary boys, a too- 
good-to-live type of youthful loveliness 
that makes one almost sad. He is de- 
ceptive. The Baa-lamb looks the partwhen 
he lays himself out to compete with imps, 
but The Beloved contradicts his aspect in 
a manner that is disappointing. It would 
be still more disappointing if he lived 
up to that angelic expression. Yet there 
is a spice of something, which if not 
angelic is, at least, uncommonly attractive, 
37 


The House of D or n ell 

in The Beloved. Something to which I 
cannot put a name, something that makes 
me patient when he prods my ribs. He is 
one of those I immediately recall when 
I hear sour persons cry down the race of 
little boys. If they only knew The Be- 
loved, they might have cause to cry in 
earnest. 

But such persons would probably lock 
their bedroom door, or put the washing- 
stand against it, if The Baa-lamb had 
stolen the key. They would have an extra 
hour for slumber, and come down in no 
better humour than I do, who am waked 
at seven. 

A lull always follows the introductory 
storm of arrival, and The Baa-lamb rests 
his elbow on that portion of my chest un- 
occupied by Don, while The Beloved 
clasps his hands behind his head, and 
looks thoughtful. His mind is running 
on a problem, I know, some knotty point 
38 


At Break of Day 

that puzzles him, and soon will come a 
question fit to tax the powers of Miss 
Edgeworth herself. The Beloved is a 
child whose thirst for knowledge would 
have charmed the authoress of “Frank”; 
but the modern boy has advanced some 
stages in sophistication since her day, and 
the replies that satisfied the simple mind of 
Frank would only cause The Beloved to 
scoff. I cannot parry the rapier thrusts 
of his intellect with such phrases as “you 
are too young to understand,” and an 
evasion would be hailed as a proof of 
ignorance. The Beloved does not ask 
questions for the mere sake of causing 
embarrassment, but I have often longed 
for the genius of Miss Edgeworth to in- 
spire me with appropriate replies. Given 
leisure, some paper, and a pen, it might 
be a simple matter; but to answer The 
Beloved off-hand, on the spur of 
the moment when taken unawares, is 
39 


The House of D or n ell 

quite a different thing. That is why 
the sight of our Beloved in a pensive 
mood fills me with uncomfortable sensa- 
tions. 

Some folk are dexterous in the art of 
handling platitudes, and nothing is easier 
than to dispose of a question by means of a 
sweeping, crushing platitude; but such a 
method does not always carry conviction 
to the mind of an inquirer, and it is neces- 
sary to convince The Beloved before he 
is satisfied. And as for crushing him, a 
moral platitude, however apt, would only 
make him laugh. I prefer the methods 
of The Baa-lamb, which dispose of a ques- 
tion more effectually, and have the addi- 
tional grace of breeziness. There is a 
tonic flavour in the comment “ Rot!” that 
is altogether missed in the suitable-for- 
children type of answer. It is sweeping, 
it is comprehensive, and it leaves no 
ground for further argument; therefore, 
40 


At Break of Day 

when The Beloved on his back, a bare 
foot kicking, utters in his slow, deep voice 
a devastating inquiry, I am thankful to 
The Baa-lamb for his crisp retort, and 
forgive the subsequent campaign across 
my body. 

But the Baa-lamb is not always my ally. 
Sometimes he joins forces with his brother 
to rend information from me, and when 
that happens I am undone. Their ques- 
tions take one by surprise, and the truth 
tumbles out before one has time to think, 
or qualify it. My private affairs I used 
to regard as my own, matters that concerned 
myself and nobody else, but since The 
Baa-lamb and The Beloved took an in- 
terest in my well-being, it is surprising 
how little there is left for them to find 
out. One question leads to another, and 
I am not always on the alert, especially in 
the early morning; still, whatever they 
find out they keep to themselves, being 
4i 


The House of Dornell 
men of honour by instinct, and my 
friends. 

As a sort of return for my confidences, 
they favour me with scraps of domestic 
news, which are certainly not intended for 
my ears, and let me know exactly how I 
stand in the estimation of the household. 
There is no idea of flattering me in this, 
no particular object in thus enlightening 
me as to the world’s opinion of my merits. 
It is a simple statement of facts that may, 
or may not, cause me joy. One thing is cer- 
tain: The Baa-lamb and The Beloved give 
me credit for being as honourable in re- 
spect to secrets as themselves, and this 
alone is fine and subtle flattery. We meet 
on an equality when I am down upon my 
back among the bed-clothes, and as equals 
we discuss the problems of to-day and 
yesterday. Any symptoms of superiority 
on my part, any attempts to play the part 
of elderly superior, would be out of place 
42 


At Break of Day 

when Don is on my chest, and would lead 
to a riot in which I should not gather 
dignity. 

In the early stages of our acquaintance, 
The Baa-lamb and The Beloved used to 
beat me with razor-strops, and hide my 
collar-studs; but that was, as it were, a 
preliminary test through which I had to 
pass, before they could accept me as a 
comrade. The testing process could be 
best carried out when I was at a dis- 
advantage, unclothed, and in no state to 
pursue beyond the limits of my bedroom 
door. That is probably why the Baa- 
lamb stole my key. Every one who has 
studied the habits of little boys and girls 
knows well this preliminary stage of 
friendship, when the grown-up person is 
subjected to a rigorous course of buffet- 
ings and annoyance, and he will agree with 
me that the test is a severe one. But a test 
of worth it is, and a friendship following 
43 


The House of D or n ell 

it is a sign that we must have, at least, 
a few good qualities to recommend us. 
Children are critical judges; therefore, to 
be called a friend by them is subtle flattery. 

I am proud to think that the Baa-lamb 
and The Beloved have chosen me as an 
intimate, and I am content to be reminded 
of the fact at any hour. Friendship is 
nothing without its accompaniment of self- 
sacrifice, and I try to keep this in mind 
when Don lies heavy on my chest. Don 
would lie there all day, but even as we 
talk, a clock strikes, and somebody ex- 
claims, “Just look at the time!” With a 
bang Don finds himself upon the floor, 
mingled with The Beloved, and their 
protests rise in unison, becoming shrill 
when The Baa-lamb, having stamped on 
me, descends on them, like a solid kind of 
cherub, from aloft. 

The room seems very quiet now they 
have gone, and were it not so late I could 
44 


At Break of Day 

with pleasure snatch an extra wink. But I 
am obliged to get up, and long before I am 
dressed, The Baa-lamb returns to tell me 
I am late for prayers. 


45 


V 


CAIRN AN 

Behind the House of Dornell, hidden in a 
secluded hollow of its own, lies Caiman’s 
Yard. Caiman is the electrician, and a 
good many other things besides, who lives 
in a highly-charged atmosphere among 
dynamos and gas-engines. It is surprising 
how he can remain so placid, one would 
think that he ought to be in some wise 
affected by his surroundings, made irritable 
perhaps, or supercilious; but Caiman is 
the most good-natured man I ever met, and 
the most obliging. Many a wet afternoon 
have I spent in that wonderful workshop 
of his, watching The Baa-lamb endanger- 
ing his life with molten metals, and listen- 
ing to the even flow of Caiman’s talk. He 
is a versatile man, a man of many accom- 
46 


Caiman 


plishments and many experiences. He has 
been in the army, navy, merchant service, 
and wherever he has been he has learned 
something. The result is that he knows a 
little bit about everything. He is full of 
stories, some of them of a blood-curdling 
nature, and the calm, matter-of-fact tone 
in which he tells them makes them all the 
more impressive. There is one about an 
artillery bombardier who blew himself up 
with a live shell. It all came of being 
careless, and the tale should, by rights, be 
closely followed by a moral. It is the sort 
of tale that would have delighted “ The 
Fairchild Family,” and Mr. Fairchild 
would have made the most of it; but from 
the lips of Caiman it is only an experience 
without any moral at all. I sometimes 
think that to a man of his wide knowledge 
of the world and its accidents, the yard 
must seem a tame and uneventful spot; 
but he is perfectly content there, like a 
47 


The House of D or n el l 

storm-tossed mariner who has come to port 
at last. 

He meanders round his gas-engine with 
an oil-can and lump of cotton waste, or 
sits in the workshop and mends things. 
What Caiman cannot mend, and what he 
is not expected to mend, I have yet to 
discover. I believe he could solder to- 
gether the fragments of a broken heart, and 
put it back in its place, firmly screwed 
down, oiled, and in better working order 
than ever. To him are brought the house- 
hold wrecks; broken spectacles, clocks, 
knives, and some things that no power on 
earth could restore. He is expected to 
mend them all; for the faith we have in 
Caiman is boundless. 

One gets accustomed to finding him in 
all sorts of strange places, and in all man- 
ner of unusual attitudes; hanging on the 
outside of the banisters while he screws in 
a fresh electric bulb, burrowing under the 
48 


Caiman 


floor on some obscure business, vanishing 
down a back stair at the sight of visitors. 
He is always gently smiling, calm, im- 
perturbable. He is a sort of ghost me- 
chanic, disappearing and appearing when 
least expected, and haunting Dornell from 
basement to garret with a little black 
tool-bag that rattles like chains. The Be- 
loved and The Baa-lamb dog the footsteps 
of Caiman wherever he goes; there are so 
many interesting things he does, so many 
dangerous things, so many things they are 
strictly forbidden to do themselves. They 
envy Caiman his freedom in the matter 
of taking things to pieces and putting them 
together again, and in the workshop they 
frequently insist on helping him. The 
workshop is not very big, and the flame of 
a blow-lamp carries a long way. In the 
operations of The Baa-lamb and The Be- 
loved it is necessary that both blow-lamps 
should be in full blast, and that pieces of 
49 


The House of D or n ell 

metal should be made red-hot and put 
down to cool in the most convenient places 
for being sat on. There is generally a 
distinct smell of singeing in the workshop 
when they are there, and they use all the 
tools for the wrong purposes. They 
break, burn and destroy, and Caiman is 
most patient about it. I have never seen 
such a patient man. He picks up his 
pincers, but drops them again in a hurry; 
they have just been heated in the blow- 
lamp. Then he goes outside for an instant 
and returns to find his bench on fire. 
Sometimes he says “ My Magneto” and 
shakes his head, sometimes he says noth- 
ing; but if The Baa-lamb happens to get 
burnt, Caiman is overflowing with sym- 
pathy at once. He reads no moral lesson, 
he never says, I told you so; indeed he 
would rather suffer all manner of incon- 
venience to himself than smile when The 
Baa-lamb or The Beloved is hurt. Some 
5o 


Caiman 


of the inconveniences he has to put up with 
are very trying. There is the toy aero- 
plane, the model Bleriot, for example, 
which sails through the door and catches 
him behind the ear when he is mending 
somebody’s watch. The wheels are in- 
stantly scattered over the bench and Cair- 
nan bangs his head against a shelf. Most 
men would be cross, say something sharp 
on the spur of the moment; but he merely 
remarks “ My Magneto ” and collects his 
tools again. He is a marvel of endurance. 

There is a special bond between Cair- 
n an and The Baa-lamb: “The Stink Ma- 
chine.” The Baa-lamb originally bought 
it through Caiman, so that the latter re- 
tains a personal feeling of interest and 
responsibility toward it, and will spend 
most of his spare time tinkering, oiling, 
caressing, experimenting with, and gloat- 
ing over, this machine with The Baa-lamb. 
The Stink Machine is a motor-bicycle, but 
5i 


The House of Dornell 

the former designation suits it best, so 
The Stink Machine it shall remain. 
The Baa-lamb has for it a devotion, tem- 
pered with anxiety, that was never sur- 
passed by the feelings of a youth in the 
throes of his first love. The caprices of a 
woman are nothing as compared to the 
caprices of a motor-bicycle, and if the 
Baa-lamb is half as attentive to his lady- 
love as he is to this complex arrangement 
of wheels and cylinders she will not have 
cause to weep from neglect. At present 
it is, Love me, love my Stink Machine, and 
only our great affection for The Baa-lamb 
enables us to tolerate his latest infatua- 
tion. The shed where it is kept is a sort 
of temple for the worship of pure ungain- 
liness, and as chief idol The Stink Ma- 
chine occupies a central place, while the 
discarded forms of obsolete bicycles, or 
“ push bikes ” as Caiman calls them, lean 
against the back wall in ignominious re- 
52 


Cairn an 


tirement. Caiman figures as high priest 
of the shrine and performs mystic rites 
with oil-can and spanner. 

The Stink Machine is an ungrateful 
beast, a thankless monster, in a chronic 
state of offence with its devotees, on whom 
it revenges itself by lying down to die on 
the road like a sick camel. Then The 
Baa-lamb has to shove his treasure back 
to Caiman’s yard, but he goes on loving 
it with a constancy that is pathetic. 

Love me, love my Stink Machine. 
Caiman once informed me, in a moment 
of confidence, that he would follow Mr. 
Baa-lamb to hell — if necessary. A little 
preliminary experience with a machine 
that blows up in his face is a mere trifle 
in comparison. To deck The Stink Ma- 
chine with what manufacturers call acces- 
sories is a never-failing delight to both 
The Baa-lamb and Caiman, and they will 
sit for hours at a time poring over cata- 
53 


The House of Dornell 

logues in search of some new and garish 
adornment. Then they will go and walk 
round and round The Stink Machine in 
speechless adoration, till Caiman suddenly 
makes a swoop at a nut that wants adjust- 
ing. The Beloved’s share in these rites 
is to blow the hooter into Caiman’s ear as 
he bends down to examine the front wheel. 
This is a jest of the finest quality, and 
never fails to cause squeals of joy when 
Caiman rubs his ear and says “ Oh, My 
Magneto! ” 

But when everything is screwed up and 
screwed on, it is an inspiring sight to see 
the noble Stink Machine sail off, glitter- 
ing with speedometers, sirens and patent 
smell-enhancers; puffing, snorting, cough- 
ing, and surmounted by The Baa-lamb 
curved into the shape of a young serpent. 
It is an inspiring sight, only it lasts too 
short a time. The inevitable is quick to 
follow; a rapid succession of bangs, a last 
54 


Caiman 


groan, and it is back to Caiman’s yard for 
alterations and repairs. I have come to 
the conclusion that Caiman cannot swear, 
otherwise a bad word must long ago have 
slipped out. The provocation he receives 
is past belief. To be burnt with molten 
lead, to have a model Bleriot shot into his 
eye, and to be called away from his after- 
dinner pipe, or from the company of his 
bosom friend, to resuscitate a fainting Stink 
Machine, are trials that could be borne 
smiling by no other man but him. He is 
never irritable, never glum, always ready 
to oblige, and, in fact, I do not know what 
we should do without him. I can see him 
now, a stop-watch in one hand, a fire- 
shovel in the other, combining the duties 
of stoker in the engine house and time- 
keeper for The Baa-lamb, who is riding 
a furious race against himself over a 
measured mile in the avenue. There is 
a steep path down to the yard, and Cair- 
55 


The House of Dornell 

nan rushes up it from the furnace, just in 
time to see The Stink Machine flash past 
and to bang the shovel on a post trium- 
phantly. “ I’d follow him to hell!” he 
says. The inspiration must have come to 
him through the door of his furnace. 


56 


VI 


THE KIND ONE 

There is a shadowy figure that drifts 
about Dornell, appearing at uncertain in- 
tervals, and departing without appreciably 
affecting the course of life. He is known 
as “ The Kind One” and he comes from 
somewhere in the South. Nobody troubles 
to locate his dwelling-place more exactly, 
and his real name is of no significance. 
It is a recognised thing, that he comes 
and goes, and as he is a harmless, amiable 
sort of being, seldom in the way and need- 
ing little attention, he is accepted as a mi- 
nor attribute of the establishment, welcome 
and yet not indispensable. He is some- 
where between thirty and forty; not young, 
yet hardly to be called elderly; a long, 
thin-faced embodiment of characteristics 


57 


The House of Dornell 

mostly negative. He seems to have no 
particular aim in life, no family ties, no 
business to occupy him; and as he is un- 
disturbed by those things that ordinarily 
harass mankind, his presence is rather 
soothing and restful. 

The family is fond of him, a little con- 
temptuously fond, perhaps, but it is im- 
possible to treat him otherwise than kindly, 
because he looks, and is, so simply amiable. 
My Lady has reasons of her own for re- 
garding The Kind One with a shade more 
definite feeling than the rest of us; he has 
confided to her a story, which appears to 
have touched her heart, and to have 
opened her eyes to something in him we do 
not comprehend. He has given her the 
clue to himself as he is now, and she sees 
what he might have been. We merely see 
The Kind One. 

His chief ambition seems to be to smoke 
a pipe all day, and the only symptoms of 
58 


The Kind One 

agitation he ever exhibits are when he finds 
himself running short of tobacco on a 
Saturday night. I cannot think of him 
apart from his pipe; a battered, burnt 
pipe, always drooping from the middle of 
his mouth, and generally bubbling softly. 
The Baa-lamb and The Beloved take it 
in turn to fill and light his pipe for him, 
and he is so good-natured that I have 
known him go half a day smokeless, be- 
cause one of the boys had carried off his 
tobacco-pouch. They would not carry it 
away on purpose, for they realise that the 
pipe is a part of The Kind One, and that 
he could no more exist without it than 
an ordinary man could exist without food 
or drink. It would not be amusing to play 
such a trick on him, because the knowledge 
of his suffering would not be made divert- 
ing by the sight of him in a rage. It 
would be a shame to hurt The Kind One, 
especially as he will not lose his temper. 

59 


The House of Dornell 

He is a quaint creature, full of odd 
notions and habits that draw down on him 
the smiles of others, and yet there is an 
underlying quality of goodness about him 
that prevents smiles from ever becoming 
sneers. When he makes us smile, a twinkle 
in his own eyes shows that the jest as seen 
by others is not lost on him. That means 
a power of sympathy, and it may be just 
that quick, generous gift of sympathy that 
makes him lovable. For The Kind One 
is lovable, and the feeling that he is, puz- 
zles a great many men, who are not used to 
the quality in the male sex, and explains 
the influence he would have with women 
if he chose to exert it. But he does not 
care to influence others, and is quite indif- 
ferent to the impression he may make on 
them; he is content to drift along in his 
course, and to let folk wonder if they will. 

The boys treat him as a mild joke, tease 
him, play tricks on him, and he always 
60 


The Kind One 

lends himself to their humour. He has an 
intuitive understanding of the young, chil- 
dren and puppies gravitate toward him nat- 
urally, and sometimes I have caught the 
responsive recognition in a glance or quick 
action from one of the yellow-headed band. 
It is an unconscious tribute, except from 
Cynthia. Cynthia has adopted The Kind 
One as a sort of foundling and her attitude 
toward him is a mixture of the romantic 
and the maternal. She reaches a little 
above his elbow, and yet she protects him, 
and she will sit gazing at him with looks 
that plainly idealise his homely form. 

She can scarcely bear to laugh when 
he is ridiculous, and she is vexed when 
others laugh. It is as though her heroic 
ideal suffers indignity, and her foundling 
slight, which makes her jealous on his 
account. She would prefer him always to 
be a hero, and no man can sustain that 
pose for ever. The Kind One fails just as 
61 


The House of Dornell 

another would, unconsciously, because he 
never dreams of being admirable. There 
is sometimes a suspicion of mockery in his 
speech, and if one forgets for a moment 
that this is The Kind One, incapable of 
guile, one is apt to feel injured. 

I have seen our friend, The Colonel, 
look puzzled and uncertain when The 
Kind One makes an apparently innocent 
remark. He is never quite sure that the 
words are as innocent as they seem, and 
The Colonel likes a soldierly directness of 
expression. He mistrusts The Kind One 
and puffs out his cheeks at his extreme 
simplicity. In all transparent natures 
there are deep spots, like holes in the 
shingly bed of a stream. Quite unex- 
pectedly we get beyond our depth, and 
the surprise we feel is as disconcerting 
as a plunge into cold water. The Colonel 
must have taken one such plunge, at least, 
because he, unlike the rest of us, main- 
62 


The Kind One 

tains a wariness toward The Kind 
One. 

But in reality The Kind One is easily 
fathomed ; there are few deep places to the 
bottom of which we cannot see, and there 
is always one explanation to fit whatever 
he says or does. The explanation is that 
he is The Kind One, whose ways are not 
the ways of ordinary folk. If we want 
to be very severe, we call him eccentric. 
He likes to moon about the woods, and has 
a special affection for pine-trees; but he 
never imparts his thoughts to us, because 
he considers us unworthy. I know he 
considers me unworthy in a special de- 
gree, and that he is sure I could not under- 
stand the subtle poetry of the woods. It 
is a little provoking to be treated thus, 
as though I were incapable of seeing what 
he sees, and of gathering the same sensa- 
tions as he gathers. A materialist I may 
be, but I have my better moments, and I 

63 


The House of Dornell 

cannot think of The Kind One as alto- 
gether kind when he denies me all beauty 
of thought and imagination. 

He is trying to teach Cynthia to see the 
wonderful effects of light among the pines. 
At present she only sees squirrels, but she 
has a dim notion of what he means. 
Dear Cynthia! she is always ready to 
oblige her friends. The Kind One gathers 
a little encouragement from the attitude 
of Cynthia, but The Baa-lamb and The 
Beloved decline to be his pupils. Neither 
in the pine-woods, nor in the bosky dell 
called Tempe will they see romance. 
Grandeur means nothing at all to them, 
and romance flies shivering to the loftiest 
tree-tops when they yell for an echo among 
the rocks. He talks about the calm and 
sweets of nature; they have bull’s-eyes in 
their pockets, which attract them more. 
They are cheerful Philistines without an 
ounce of sentiment in their composition. I 
64 


The Kind One 

have known them to take ginger-beer 
bottles into Tempe, and drink in the face 
of a crimson sunset. 

No wonder The Kind One prefers the 
company of Cynthia. And there is an- 
other reason why he should be friends with 
her. She knows his secret, and he can 
talk to her of other things than light 
effects. One evening I was on the hill 
where the pine-trees grow, behind Dor- 
nell. It was a still summer evening, and 
all about me rose the tall pillars of the 
wood in solemn ranks to meet the dusky 
shade of branches far above. Underfoot 
were the crisp pine-needles, and from the 
summit of the hill I looked down upon the 
valley, all aglow with sunset, to where lay 
Dornell, the river and the sleepy fields of 
corn. The river, like a broad, silver band, 
curved away to the east, while along the 
horizon, dim and blue, stretched the sea. 
The west was cloudless, a perfect sweep of 
65 


The House of D o r n el l 

tones from red to sapphire blue, and the 
stems of the pine-trees, touched here and 
there with light, were stained a rich madder- 
brown. It was a scene as near perfection 
as anything this earth can show, and like 
the almost perfect, it was just a trifle sad — 
the sea, and the river, and the glowing 
west. As I stood there I heard voices, or 
rather a voice, from somewhere below me 
in the wood. A monotonous croak it was, 
like the croak of an aged raven trying to 
repeat poetry, and it roused my curiosity. 
Then I saw The Kind One and Cynthia. 
He was sprawling on an elbow, and she 
was watching him with her most rapt 
and serious expression. I could see her 
side-face, and the gleams of sunlight were 
falling on her hair, so that she looked 
like an angel. It was Cynthia’s face that 
made me feel an intruder, and that caused 
me to slip quietly away without being 
noticed, though I would have given much 
66 


The Kind One 

to know what The Kind One was croaking 
about, and why he sprawled there in an 
attitude so stricken. 

The explanation dawned upon me later, 
when Cynthia asked me if I had ever been 
in love. This also explains The Kind 
One. 


67 


VII 


MISS MORELAND 

Miss Moreland keeps a school for little 
boys whose parents are in India, or in 
other parts of our empire where little 
boys do not thrive. There are generally 
eight or nine of these young waifs, who 
live all the year round with Miss More- 
land, and a sprinkling of boys more for- 
tunate, who have relations in England, 
and homes of their own to go to in the 
holidays. But the waifs have a mother in 
Miss Moreland, while they remain be- 
neath her roof, and their lot is far from 
sorrowful. True, they are subject to a 
fine, old-fashioned discipline, but Miss 
Moreland is old-fashioned in every detail 
of her life, even to the extent of wearing 
caps, and side-curls, which are grey and 
68 


Miss Moreland 

very neat. Her face is rather grim, with 
large features that give her a somewhat 
man-like appearance; but her heart i9 
altogether womanly, so that she more often 
shakes her cane than uses it. She is fond 
of proverbs about sparing the rod, and 
in theory is a rigorous Spartan; all the 
same, her little boys are not in the least 
afraid of her, and a whacking now and 
then does not impair their confidence. 

Miss Moreland does not teach in her 
school, on account of her mathematics, 
which are weak, so she has a master for 
the boys, but reserves the right of judg- 
ing sinners and of punishing them for her- 
self. No one is allowed to whack a boy 
except Miss Moreland, because she holds 
the administration of stripes to be a paren- 
tal duty, and not one that should be in- 
trusted to a mere usher. The parents of 
these boys are far away; they cannot 
whack their offspring; therefore the duty 
69 


The House of D or n ell 

devolves upon Miss Moreland, who stands 
temporarily in the place of a parent. This 
she always explains to each victim who is 
whacked. There may, or may not, have 
been a romance in the early life of Miss 
Moreland. Her father was a Scottish 
minister, and she an only child. She must 
have been handsome as a girl, but there is 
no record of her ever having been in love, 
or of her ever having been sought in mar- 
riage. Yet she is neither a sour old-maid, 
nor does she bear the looks of one who 
has suffered disappointment, and if ro- 
mance did once invade her life, she has 
buried the memory of it so well that the 
world has forgotten. Miss Moreland she 
has always been, and Miss Moreland she 
will remain to the end of her days, and if 
she owns a secret it will die with her, 
for she is not a woman to keep tokens, or 
old letters, in a desk. 

It is a pleasant spot where the school 
70 


Miss Moreland 

stands. There are trees about it, and a 
white wall facing the road. Miss More- 
land has her private gate, the school has 
a gate of its own; but the whole house is 
of a piece, white, snug and cheerful, with 
green fields on every side, and an orchard 
where there is a pond. If boys fall into 
the pond, they are put to bed till their 
clothes are dry; if they steal apples they 
go to bed for a whole day, and have 
nauseous physic given them as well. Miss 
Moreland knows better than to cane boys 
for stealing apples. The probability of 
a licking is always taken into con- 
sideration when we go to rob orchards; 
but the prospect of a day in bed with 
physic is apt to daunt the stoutest 
heart. 

My Lady has a great respect for Miss 
Moreland, I think she is a little afraid 
of her, and feels meek in her presence; 
but Miss Moreland is always very kind 
7i 


The House of Dornell 

to My Lady, and pats her hand encour- 
agingly. On Sunday afternoons we often 
walk from Dornell to the school, and pay 
a visit to Miss Moreland in her trim, 
lavender-scented drawing-room. She has 
a silk gown for Sundays, and a cap of 
state, and we generally find her with the 
Bible, or a Book of Homilies beside her. 
She meditates on Sunday afternoon, but 
when we arrive, she shuts her book, takes 
off her spectacles, and gives us a hearty 
welcome. We are all welcome, — Cynthia, 
The Baa-lamb, The Beloved, — and though 
Miss Moreland is a schoolmistress and 
her house a school, the boys seem undis- 
mayed. They grin with friendly breadth, 
and Miss Moreland nods at them ap- 
provingly. She does approve of the boys, 
and in their holiday time she sends young 
Anglo-Indians to play with them at Dor- 
nell. All the little boys who come to 
Dornell fall victims to the charms of 


72 


Miss Moreland 

Caiman’s yard, and most of them are 
quite determined to be engineers, like 
Caiman. His workshop is a fascinating 
place to them, and to be master of such 
a splendid treasure-house is the private 
ambition of each one. They worship 
Caiman, but not one of them dares wor- 
ship Cynthia, or, at any rate, show an 
open admiration. Cynthia scorns little 
boys from Miss Moreland’s school, be- 
cause her most intimate friends are grown 
men, beside whom little boys are insignifi- 
cant and crude. Still, she likes coming 
with us to visit Miss Moreland, and appre- 
ciates her grim remarks in quite a grown- 
up way. The Baa-lamb and The Beloved 
approve of Miss Moreland on account of 
the excellent things her cupboards con- 
tain. Excellent things to eat and drink; 
raspberry vinegar, cake, and ginger-wine. 
The latter is a trifle medicinal to taste, 
but they drink it, because it is produced 
73 


The House of D or n ell 

at unseasonable hours, and is therefore 
desirable. 

When we sit in Miss Moreland’s room 
of a Sunday afternoon, the same arrange- 
ment is always observed. My Lady and 
our hostess sit apart, close to the Bible 
and the Book of Homilies, and form a sort 
of interested audience while the rest of us, 
in a row on chairs, sip home-made wines 
and munch cake. Miss Moreland looks 
at us, and smiles in her grim manner, and 
nods. Then she turns to pat My Lady’s 
hand with quite a different smile. The 
refreshments are brought in on a tray by 
a maid called Mary McKie, who is never 
addressed except by both her names, and 
whose face is so red, and hard, and angry, 
that one would never suspect her of hav- 
ing a kind heart, and of treating little 
boys to apples on the sly. Yet she does, 
and Miss Moreland gets confused next 
time she counts the apple store. Mary 
74 


Miss Moreland 

McKie speaks of the little boys, whose 
parents are abroad, as poor, unfortunate 
babes, and she thinks the parents are un- 
natural monsters, because they go away to 
the ends of the earth and leave the bits 
of laddies to the mercy of a stranger. She 
is convinced that she alone stands between 
these children and tyranny, while Miss 
Moreland is privately certain that Mary 
McKie would bully her charges, were 
there not a vigilant eye to overlook her 
acts. 

Yet both these women have the softest 
hearts imaginable, and a simplicity that 
their grim manners cannot hide. They 
are imposed upon continually; villagers 
with artful tales of woe, tramps and beg- 
gars, and all who would turn a penny 
easily come to Miss Moreland. She has 
work in the garden for those who will 
work, gifts for those who cannot, and soup 
for everybody. No beggar is ever sent 
75 


The House of D or n ell 

away from her house empty. He is filled 
and fed from a large, black pot that sim- 
mers constantly beside the kitchen fire. 
A bowl of soup and a penny was the usual 
dole, till Mary McKie discovered a tramp 
in the act of pouring soup down the yard 
drain ; after which the dole was reduced to 
a halfpenny, and the soup stopped alto- 
gether. Then, according to a well- 
established legend, the fraternity of tramps 
went out on strike, and Miss Moreland 
was obliged to raise their pay to the old 
standard before they would again patro- 
nise her flesh-pots. But even that unhappy 
episode has not in the least degree affected 
Miss Moreland’s charity, and I myself 
have seen Mary McKie stride, like an 
avenging amazon, from the kitchen door 
to cram a discarded hat of her own upon 
the head of a small beggar-child, whose 
parent had just filched the scrubbing- 
brush. Mary’s face was black as thunder 
76 


Miss Moreland 

all the while, and yet the child looked up 
at her and laughed. 

If Miss Moreland had been watching 
through a peep-hole in the garden hedge, 
she would have frowned, and gone away 
to ring the bell, in case Mary McKie 
should foolishly part with all her ward- 
robe. In the meantime, we in the drawing- 
room have finished our cake and wine, 
and The Beloved has scooped up the 
crumbs with the fire-shovel. Miss More- 
land makes one of us do this on every 
occasion when we eat cake in her house. 
It is an act of discipline, as it were, to 
prevent us from feeling too self-satisfied 
after the ginger-wine. We rise to say 
good-bye; but before we go, Mary McKie 
is told to fetch a jar of bramble jam. It 
is a present for The Beloved, a reward 
for scooping up the crumbs, and Mary 
McKie hands it to him with awful warn- 
ings as to which is right side up. She 
77 


The House of Dornell 

would like to kiss The Baa-lamb, but, 
knowing the nature of boys, she frowns at 
him instead, and drives us into the garden, 
like a flock of geese, while My Lady and 
Miss Moreland kiss and pat each other 
in the hall. 


78 


VIII 


IN THE DUSK 

There is a sofa in the big saloon; a rest- 
ful sofa, with cushions, that has not a hard 
place in it. Broad and deep, it stands 
apart, like the white bench in the garden, 
as a proper lounging-spot for dreams and 
idleness. A poet might dream his winter 
visions there, just as in summer he might 
choose the garden bench to sit on while he 
wove a mid-June romance. But a poet 
at Dornell would live a sorry life, unless 
he were a children’s poet, and then, per- 
haps, he might discover delicate thoughts 
for verse in the gambols of The Baa-lamb. 
Had I possessed an ounce of poetry in my 
being, it would have been squeezed from 
me long ago upon the sofa, when, as the 
bottom layer of a warm and pounding 
79 


t-vf % "M 


The House of D or n ell 

mass, I have experienced the full charm 
of childhood’s presence. Cynthia at such 
times seems to be all angles; elbows, knees, 
knuckles, and they hurt abominably; as 
for The Beloved, I have feebly wondered 
how he got his name, and how he expects 
any one to love him when he claws their 
hair. Imagine the locks of a poet in his 
grasp ! 

No, we are not poets, nor are we given 
to romance; still there are some hours 
when the sofa is not a battle-ground, when 
angles smooth themselves into curves as 
soft as the cushions, and riot gives place 
to something that is, at least, suggestive 
of romance. I have Cynthia in my mind, 
Cynthia and My Lady in the dusk of a 
summer evening in the big saloon. My 
Lady is at the piano, and as she touches 
the keys a chord within Cynthia responds. 
How well I know Cynthia in that mood! 
It comes to her only at such times as these, 
80 


i 


In the Dusk 

and afflicts her with a pensive yearning 
to be loved, so that she sits in a corner of 
the sofa and looks — at me. Just looks, 
but her eyes are very blue and bright, and 
eloquent without the help of words. It is 
an invitation, framed in Cynthia’s own 
way, and irresistible as she is. I know 
what is required of me, for we have acted 
the same little scene before, and I am 
perfect in my part. 

These old-fashioned airs of Mozart and 
Beethoven! No music in the world can 
touch their melody, and they always bring 
back to me recollections of Dornell, the 
scent of mignonette, and Cynthia’s pretty 
wooing in the dusk. It is pleasant to be 
wooed by Cynthia; it comes as a reward 
after much strife, and we two go sweet- 
hearting in a country of our own, hand-in- 
hand while the music casts its spell. My 
duty is to be passive, rather than respon- 
sive in behaviour, so I sit quite still be- 
81 


The House of Dornell 

side Cynthia on the sofa and wait. The 
first move is hers — and the last, which is 
generally a punch in the ribs — but that 
comes much later on, and for the present 
I am delicately expectant. After a while, 
a hand slips very gently through my arm, 
so gently that I can hardly feel it, and 
so shyly that I dare not stir lest it should 
be withdrawn. Then by degrees her 
fingers creep along, till they fit them- 
selves, one by one, between my fingers 
and remain there, firmly clasped, while 
her body inclines toward me, until her 
head rests just below my shoulder. How 
lightly it rests! It is the gossamer touch 
of a fairy, scarcely more perceptible than 
a yellow sunbeam playing on my sleeve, 
and, like a sunbeam, it is warm and 
bright. What a contrast to the bumps of 
half an hour ago! 

I glance down to make sure that this is 
really Cynthia, because I am so used to 
82 


In the Dusk 

bumps that this nestling seems always new 
and strange. Our spirits are very much 
at peace as we sit thus, and I reflect with 
satisfaction that The Baa-lamb, and The 
Beloved are not likely to break in upon 
our peace. They are with Caiman, the 
electrician, damaging his workshop, or 
helping him to mend the kitchen clock, 
and in such occupations they are better 
employed than in tormenting us. Caiman 
plays the bagpipes, to the music of which 
howls and yells are a natural accompani- 
ment, and The Baa-lamb enjoys cheerful 
music; besides, he knows that the High- 
land soul of Caiman floats away on the 
strains of his own melody, so that he be- 
comes oblivious to earthly details. While 
Caiman bewails Lochaber on the pipes, 
The Baa-lamb filches his screw-driver. 
The Beloved has a taste for the music of 
a gramophone, and Cynthia was once so 
led away as to suppose that I could dally 
83 


The House of D o r n e 1 1 

with sentiment to the tune of a music-hall 
ballad on a scratched disc. That was 
long ago; quite in the early days of our 
courtship, and before Cynthia had de- 
veloped an artistic feeling. She has 
learned discrimination since then, she 
would resent the gramophone now; but all 
the same, were Caiman to pass the door 
with his little black tool-bag, I fear she 
would cast me off and flee to him. What 
are the thoughts of Cynthia, as she sits 
beside me in the sofa corner? Her eyes 
have in them a faraway look, which may 
mean that she is thinking of the sheds in 
Caiman’s yard, and of her brothers de- 
lightfully employed there. I wonder, and 
I have often wondered, what the fancies 
are that pass through Cynthia’s mind when 
she is pensive. It would be idle to in- 
quire, because she would only laugh, and 
shake herself, and say she did not know, 
which would probably be the truth, and, 
84 


In the Dusk 

for my part, I am quite content to leave 
her fancies unexplored. We might, to all 
appearance, be asleep in that corner of the 
sofa; but we are not, because these hours 
are too precious to be wasted in sleep, 
being, as they are, Cynthia’s and mine; our 
own apart from the common hours of 
day. If Cynthia has been vexed or 
grieved, I know it by the feeling of her 
clasp, and if she wants to thank me, or 
to say that she is glad, her hand on mine 
gives the impression, rather than the 
reality, of a caress. It is an unspoken 
interchange of sentiments between us, and 
I no longer can believe she pines for 
Caiman. I think My Lady appreciates 
these quiet intervals as much as we do, 
and that she would miss our dreamy pauses 
at twilight; but, like Cynthia, she seldom 
puts in words her private thoughts. If 
we were absent she would still play soft 
airs on the piano, and if she missed us she 
85 


The House of Dornell 

would never tell. Yet all three of us 
would feel a blank somewhere in our 
existence, and a sense of loss, with- 
out our evening’s music in the big 
saloon. 

There is a quiver of sunlight on the 
broad steps outside the door, where the 
last rays always linger, and I know that 
in the west the sky is red and orange. 
The cedar-trees on the lawn, and the sun- 
dial, throw their shadows across the turf,, 
and the garden scents rise up from the 
warm ground. How many scents there 
are! Each one distinct, and all blending 
together, like notes of music, in a perfect 
harmony. The doorway is a picture- 
frame, and through it we can see the fields, 
some green, some gold with the barley 
harvest, that slope toward the river. Again 
I look at Cynthia, dream-child, or imp of 
Satan, as the mood prompts her. With 
what thoughts is that yellow head of yours 
86 


In the Dusk 

busy? Do you weave fancies from the 
changing lights upon the river, or are you 
simply drowsy? Cynthia’s eyes are fixed 
upon the river, full with the tide that 
sweeps in from the sea, and her fingers 
tighten on my hand. The evening land- 
scape is warm and homely; but the river 
is mysterious. Under the banks where the 
hills come down to the water’s edge, there 
are strange dark shadows, purple, and 
green, and black that are full of mystery, 
while even the mid-stream with its red and 
orange tints seems to hold secrets we can- 
not understand. There is something al- 
most uncanny in a great and silent river, 
particularly when there are no ships upon 
it, and one might reasonably expect to find 
goblins and kelpies haunting those shores 
beneath the hills. The woods are very 
sombre against the sky, but even as we 
look, the light breaks suddenly across them 
from the west, and their shadows are gone. 
87 


The House of D or n ell 

They are pleasant woods to look at now, 
and Cynthia feels the change as I do. 

The music has drifted into something 
that is not Mozart. I do not know what 
it is My Lady plays, but the air began as 
the light struck the green line of hills be- 
yond the river, which shows that her eyes 
and fancy have been following ours. Un- 
spoken sympathy — unspoken, yet so true — 
exists between us three: My Lady, Cyn- 
thia and myself. 

With the final chord the spell is broken. 
Ordinary sounds of life are heard again; 
the dressing-bell, the boys’ voices, and the 
scampering of dogs along the passage. 
Cynthia wakes to tell us she is hungry, 
and then she hits me in the ribs, so that I 
come back from dream-land in a hurry. 
A strenuous recall to actualities it is; but 
still, whenever I hear certain airs played 
softly in the gloaming, the scene just past 
returns to me, and I am once more in the 
88 


In the Dusk 


big saloon at Dornell, watching the river 
change its hues, feeling again the golden 
head of a dream-child lie close against my 
shoulder. 


89 


IX 


THE COLONEL 

He is one of those brave old boys to whom 
the winning of a Victoria Cross means no 
more than that he has helped some poor 
fellow out of a hole. He thinks nothing 
of the deed that won him fame, and I do 
not suppose it ever strikes him that his 
action on the battlefield was in any way 
brave or remarkable. He is modest, like 
all true heroes, and like a child he is 
simple. Old, stout, white-haired, he comes 
to Dornell with his cheery laugh, a laugh 
that chokes him when the jest is good, 
and his arrival is like the coming of a gale, 
because we have to roar at him to make 
him hear. He is a boy among boys, there 
never was a heart so young as his, and 
few young men can appreciate the smaller 
90 


The Colonel 


joys of life as he can. A jaunt to a fair, 
a picnic, an afternoon with children at the 
pantomime are all joys to him, and the 
freshness of his delight never flags. 

At Dornell he has his own room, The 
Colonel’s room, which he regards as his 
by right of long occupancy, and because he 
keeps some of his clothes in a cupboard 
there. The key of that cupboard is carried 
about in The Colonel’s pocket, he takes 
it away with him when he goes, and the 
first thing he does on returning is to unlock 
the door and air his things. The Colonel’s 
suits are wide and baggy; he needs space 
to expand in when he chuckles, and a tight 
waistcoat would be fatal when he makes, 
or sees, a joke. He relishes a joke, though 
often he gets an entirely wrong idea of its 
true form; but, generally speaking, the 
result as retailed by him is an improve- 
ment on the original. Sometimes it is 
hard to detect the original after The 
9i 


The House of D or n ell 

Colonel has improved upon it, for he is 
so deaf and so naturally full of humour, 
that out of two words correctly heard he 
will compose a tale with a joke in it like 
an earthquake. When he does this nobody 
tries to put him right; his story is always 
so much better than the authentic version, 
and it is worth while allowing one’s best 
tale to be ruined only to see him chuckle 
and rub his legs. 

His deafness does not trouble him in the 
least; he has an answer ready at all times, 
and if it is not the appropriate one, our 
wits have to be nimble in the emergency. 
Nobody could imagine that The Colonel 
wished to be insulting; he is a gentleman 
in the true sense of the word, and the fine- 
ness of his feelings is such that he would 
not willingly affront his worst enemy. I 
think The Beloved will grow into some- 
thing like The Colonel, for there are 
points even now, in which they resemble 
92 


The Colonel 


one another. They both have a tendency 
toward plumpness, The Colonel is short of 
breath, The Beloved breathes hard when 
he meditates, and their hearts are equally 
tender. Neither of them would hurt a fly, 
though The Colonel has caused pain to 
tigers, and there is the same truthful sim- 
plicity about them both, and a touch of 
something vaguely pathetic. Yes, I can 
see The Beloved, through a dim vista of 
years, becoming as The Colonel is; the 
boy is father to the man, and survives in 
some men to the end of their days. The 
Colonel has no sons of his own; he is a 
bachelor, and lives half the year at his 
club in London. The remaining six 
months he divides among a circle of well- 
established friends. 

Everybody likes The Colonel. The 
children like him, the dogs (with the ex- 
ception of Anthony Stinkins, who hates all 
men on principle) like him, and the serv- 
93 


The House of D o r n e 1 1 

ants know him as an open-handed gentle- 
man, wherefore they like him too. He 
takes a deep and serious interest in any 
little domestic trouble, and is just the sort 
of man who would be asked, at a crisis, 
to give the footman good advice. He 
would do it, too, gladly, and if the foot- 
man showed proper penitence The Colo- 
nel would reward him with half a 
crown. 

But there is one person, not counting 
Mr. Stinkins, on whom The Colonel exer- 
cises an unhappy effect. Caiman does not 
like him, for reasons of his own, and 
whenever we take our old friend to visit 
Caiman at the yard, there is sure to be 
something urgently wrong with the gas- 
engine or dynamos. The Colonel is 
pleased to consider himself scientific, and 
is fond of giving us little lectures on steam 
and electricity, and of prodding wheels 
with his walking-stick. Caiman resents 
94 


The Colonel 

this kind of behaviour in his own particular 
sheds, and becomes uncommunicative when 
he is asked questions. Then The Colonel 
imagines that Caiman is deaf and bellows 
at him, whereupon Caiman makes use of 
his subtle knowledge to cause an explosion, 
in order to terrify The Colonel. In this 
respect he is generally successful, for The 
Colonel, in spite of his scientific tend- 
encies, is profoundly ignorant of engines 
and their ways. He is distrustful of all 
machinery, and Caiman can assume the 
air of one seriously alarmed; so that when 
an explosion occurs, and Caiman leaps 
back with an arm sheltering his face, The 
Colonel tumbles out of the door in a 
hurry. He calls it “ confoundedly dan- 
gerous,” and goes away to tell The Master 
of the House how unsafe it is for children 
to loiter round “ that infernal shed.” We 
hear him arguing at the top of his voice, 
and know that The Master of the House 


95 


The House of D or n ell 

is trying to lure him down to the garden 
in order to admire the vines. We sneak 
back to Caiman, whom we find wiping his 
hands on a lump of cotton waste and 
whistling softly to himself. 

The fact of the matter is that Caiman 
is jealous. He thinks The Baa-lamb pays 
far too much attention to The Colonel, and 
that he himself is neglected. The Stink 
Machine, too, the precious motor-bicycle. 
That The Baa-lamb should prefer the com- 
pany of an old man full of ignorance to the 
Stink Machine is a disappointing circum- 
stance that particularly pains the heart 
of Caiman. What is the use of being 
ready to follow a boy to hell, if that boy 
will insist on following the tame footsteps 
of a wheezy old gentleman? Caiman does 
not say this, but he implies it, and when 
we go back to him he nods his head, as 
though to remark “ just so.” 

Caiman should remember that the car- 
96 


The Colonel 

penter is just as jealous of him as he is of 
The Colonel, and that the keeper is jealous 
of the carpenter when the boys spend an 
afternoon at the sawmill, and that to be 
fair to all, a man or boy must live in a 
state of perpetual aloofness incompatible 
with human nature. 

The Colonel is innocent of all intention 
to hurt the feelings of anybody, and his 
whiff of ill-humor is soon past. By tea- 
time he is crowing over a new joke, and 
tells us wonderful tales about the Indian 
Mutiny and The Crimea. He has a habit 
of falling asleep unexpectedly, his only 
symptom of senile decay, but even when he 
sleeps he contrives to give us entertain- 
ment. He issues commands to imaginary 
troops, shoots visionary bears, and sets him- 
self on fire with his pipe. When he wakes 
and sees a ring of grinning faces round 
him, he is quite pleased, and tells us an- 
other story of the siege of Delhi. 

97 


The House of D or n ell 

What a kind old man he is! He takes 
the greatest interest in the welfare of 
others, and will go out of his way at any 
time to help a lame dog over a stile, or to 
pull a drunken man off the road. He has 
had several fights with drunkards whom 
he wished to save from dangerous posi- 
tions, but he will go on saving them just 
the same, and the publicity of his en- 
counters affects him not at all. There is 
always a quaintness in The Colonel’s acts, 
which prevents one from feeling overcome 
by his kindness. At Dornell he invariably 
bangs upon my bedroom door after he has 
had his bath in the morning, for fear I 
may be late for prayers. On the first 
occasion he forgot to tell me that he had 
turned the water on, so that there was a 
flood in the house for which I was blamed. 
The Colonel thinks so much of other folk 
that he very often neglects to look after 
himself, and blunders into strange predica- 
98 


The Colonel 

ments, simply through not taking ordinary 
precautions. He never asks himself what 
the consequences are likely to be; he just 
does the thing, and makes a joke when the 
consequences are unfortunate. There is 
so much of the boy in him, such a fund of 
impetuous gallantry, that his old body can 
scarcely bear the strain. His nature tempts 
him to defy years and prudence. That is 
how he wears The Victoria Cross, and that 
is how he will meet his death, so his 
friends say. But The Colonel cares noth- 
ing for death. Life to him is no round of 
precautionary measures against chills and 
the gout; he enjoys the world, and life 
while it lasts, and when the end comes to 
him he will face it like the brave old 
soldier that he is. Some day we shall miss 
The Colonel, and at Dornell when the 
west is red against the pine-trees, and the 
evening stillness broods upon the fields, 
we shall think of him, as he loved at such 
99 


The House of D or n ell 

an hour to sit, amidst the children and 
the dogs, on the broad steps that over- 
look the river and the placid woods be- 
yond. 


ioo 


X 


GUARDED TREASURES 

In most households there are certain 
drawers and cupboards, guarded with 
jealous care, that contain treasures more 
precious to those who own them than all 
the world’s wealth besides. I mean those 
drawers and shelves in which are stowed 
away things worthless to the common eye, 
meaningless to those who have not shared 
with one or two of us the secret of their 
value — the memories and associations they 
recall. There are letters in school-boy 
round-hand, mats and kettle-holders 
worked in brilliant wools, models made by 
the boys in the workshops at school, queer 
little gifts by which children show their 
love, and all sorts of odds and ends con- 
nected with childhood. When such draw- 

IOI 


The House of Dornell 

ers and cupboards are opened it is with a 
gentle hand, and the eyes that look on 
their contents are never the same eyes the 
world knows. 

It may be ridiculous to think of an 
elderly woman, one we have known in 
circumstances not the least tender or ro- 
mantic, bowing in worship over a kettle- 
holder stitched in black and yellow wool; 
and it may be equally ridiculous to think 
of a middle-aged man of acknowledged 
sanity in the affairs of every day, handling 
with pride and delight pieces of a wooden 
model made by one of his boys at school, 
and presented to him on the first day of 
the holidays. Such notions may be absurd 
— as absurd as a packet of old love-letters 
— but we keep our treasures under lock 
and key and our absurdities hid, so that 
we may still pass for what we would seem 
to be, common-sense folk without imagina- 
tions. 


102 


Guarded Treasures 

At Dornell, we like to think ourselves 
practical, and unromantic, but there is a 
treasure-cupboard in the house, all the 
same, and its shelves hold as absurd a 
collection of trifles as can well be con- 
ceived. True, some apology for weakness 
might be found in the fact that each 
article is neatly tied up and labelled; 
there is an orderly method in the arrange- 
ment of the shelves that suggests a business 
mind; but this very scrupulous regard for 
detail seems only to emphasise weakness, 
not to hide it. Affection stands betrayed 
in the folding of a paper, pride in the 
tying of a string. One shelf holds speci- 
mens of what The Baa-lamb has made 
in the workshops, and the labels on each 
bear his name and a date. The triumph 
of such inscription is obvious. The brass 
screw he turned at the age of fourteen 
needs just those few words to enhance 
its merits. “ Aged fourteen.” What more 
103 


The House of D or n ell 

can be said — what further comment is 
necessary on the genius that wrought this 
long, brass screw? It is a better memorial 
of The Baa-lamb than would be a golden 
curl from his tousled head. The hard- 
fisted, unromantic Baa-lamb would never 
rest content until he had destroyed that 
curl; whereas he is rather proud of the 
brass screw, and satisfied that it should be 
admired. There are technical points about 
a screw that none but an expert can 
appreciate, and Caiman has spoken favour- 
ably of its thread, so that The Baa-lamb 
feels he has some right to be proud. The 
praise of Caiman in matters mechanical is 
worth more than the ignorant admiration of 
an obliging stranger. 

The Beloved is not a mechanical genius. 
He is represented in the treasure-cupboard 
by milder, though no less characteristic 
tokens. Bundles of laudatory school re- 
ports, letters from masters, letters from 
104 


Guarded Treasures 

himself, and an old school diary. The 
Beloved has a mind methodical, and the 
chronicles of his early life are pencilled 
among classroom notes, and carefully en- 
tered items of personal expenditure. The 
Beloved has a methodical mind, and a gift 
for justifying his name. In the treasure- 
cupboard there is nothing sad; nothing too 
sacred for even the eyes of an old friend 
to look upon. But there are some things 
with a whimsical sort of pathos attached 
to them. Cynthia’s wool-mat, or kettle- 
holder — it might be either — is one of them, 
and I can realise the pain it must have 
cost my sweetheart to complete that gaudy 
square of red and blue. Cynthia is not 
a person one would naturally connect with 
patient needle-work; she has not the tem- 
perament that delights in plain sewing, and 
the beauty of housewifely industry does not 
appeal to her. She pricks her fingers, 
breaks her thread, and uses expressions, 
105 


The House of Dornell 

strong enough to call for reproof from a 
long-suffering teacher. If she could stand 
on her head and sew with her feet, she 
would be perfectly happy. The perform- 
ance would be one to evoke admiration, 
and to excite envy in the hearts of all 
beholders. But to sit on a chair and sew 
a straight seam is an occupation derogatory 
in the eyes of Cynthia. 

The Colonel, her old friend, tells her 
she will never make a good wife unless 
she learns to sew on buttons ; but his 
idea of wifely duty does not touch Cynthia, 
and marriage seems to her, after all, a 
poor reward for so much suffering. The 
kettle-holder was worked as a birthday 
present for her father; a secret flaunted 
before him for months, a thing that forced 
itself upon every one’s attention by reason 
of its brilliancy, an object fraught with 
the terror of a stumpy needle, which 
seemed ubiquitous throughout Dornell, 
106 


Guarded Treasures 

particularly in deep arm-chairs and sofa 
corners. The Master of the House once 
flung the kettle-holder out of the window; 
he had some excuse and was ignorant of 
its final destination; but Cynthia wept, 
because she intended it for him and he 
seemed to despise it. It was a question 
with her for some time whether she should 
present her offering or not; but when she 
did, with blushes and diffidence, her 
father called it beautiful and straightway 
hid its glory in the treasure-cupboard. 

It would have pleased Cynthia better, 
had he hung it on a nail beside the fire. 
Kettle-holders should hang thus, and its 
immediate disappearance may have awak- 
ened suspicions in her breast. She did 
not know that her canvas kettle-holder had 
gone to occupy a place of honour, and 
she has never tried to make another. 

The treasure-cupboard is, as it were, a 
centre from which spring delicate threads 
107 


The House of Dornell 

of remembrance all through the house. 
Dornell has its children, and we are never 
allowed to forget them. Tokens of them 
meet us everywhere, and the atmosphere 
breathes an essence of their creating. On 
the walls of My Lady’s room hang photo- 
graphs, likenesses of The Baa-lamb in a 
kilt, and of The Beloved in something less, 
which cause the originals to turn red with 
shame, and to deny that they ever could 
have been so fat or so indelicate. There 
is a picture of Cynthia in the drawing- 
room; a pretty picture, though not in the 
least like her. It represents a dream-child 
and Cynthia hates it with all her heart 
and soul. The eyes in particular vex her, 
because they follow her about reproach- 
fully, and make her think of all the things 
an ideal Cynthia would have done, and 
which she, the real Cynthia, has neglected. 
It is as though her conscience had been 
transferred to canvas as a reproach to her 
108 


Guarded Treasures 

for evermore. No wonder she hates the 
picture; still I could envy her the posses- 
sion of so fair a conscience. 

The Baa-lamb used to tease her about 
that picture, till I discovered his own 
double in Little Cupid on the summer 
house. Since then he has avoided the 
subject of likenesses, and I have won the 
lasting gratitude of Cynthia. 

It is good to be a friend in such a house 
as Dornell, and to know that I am one 
of very few for whom the doors of the 
treasure-cupboard have been unlocked. I 
am allowed to see what is hid from the 
world in general, and of this honour I 
am deeply sensible. Sometimes it is con- 
sidered necessary to make me an apology; 
but they are not genuine apologies, only 
forms lest I should fail to mark the privi- 
lege conferred on me. When The Master 
of the House unlocks the doors, and shows 
me the latest model, or the last report from 
109 


The House of Dornell 

a satisfied schoolmaster, I understand how 
he feels, even when he affects to treat 
these objects lightly. I like him better 
at such times, when he gloats over the 
pieces of a model he does not comprehend, 
or exhibits a school report of surpassing 
excellence, than at any other time in our 
intercourse. His simulated carelessness is 
a delight, and yet I dare not smile, in case 
he should misconstrue the act. With My 
Lady it is altogether different. I smile to 
her and she returns my smile. Dear me, 
how ridiculous it all is! How absurdly 
childish we are! But still the subtle un- 
dercurrent of unspoken sympathy between 
us flows from one to the other, even as 
we smile, and so, with a smile and a 
perfect understanding, we go on to the 
next shelf. 


no 


XI 


THE SCRATCHER 

' * Give me the withered leaves I chose 
Before in the old time.” 

In order to be a Scratcher two things 
are needed: an old broom and a philo- 
sophic temperament. The broom is for 
sweeping up dead leaves, and the tem- 
perament of a philosopher is most neces- 
sary when the wind blows them away. 
Who but a philosopher could calmly see 
the labour of a whole morning scattered 
far and wide by a mischievous breeze 
springing up at mid-day? It is the com- 
mon fate of a scratched labour to be 
rendered futile by a puff of air, for as 
fast as he gets together a heap of leaves, 
all dry, light and crisp, the wind comes 
with a shout of triumph and romps over 


hi 


The House of D or n ell 

it. Then the scratcher has to begin his 
task again, and so the struggle goes on, 
till the breeze becomes weary and the 
man prevails. 

The scratcher knows not the word de- 
feat in connection with leaves, and he 
will go steadily on, raking them together 
and seeing them blow back to their origi- 
nal haunts, with an imperturbable spirit 
that cannot be daunted. I believe he re- 
sents a calm day; it gives him an unfair 
advantage over his enemy the wind, and 
when the wind is absent the scratcher feels 
the flatness and insipidity of unopposed 
success. Besides, he knows that when the 
heaps are once made, he will have to 
wheel them away in a barrow, and wheel- 
ing lacks all the poetry and art of scratch- 
ing. 

One may scratch in a reverie, dream 
lovely thoughts, soothed by the motion 
and rustling sound; sing little songs to 


1 12 


The Scratcher 

oneself, or plan a week’s work in advance. 
With a wheel-barrow there is no senti- 
ment, no poetry; it is dull, mechanical 
plodding, and if one dreams at all, it is 
only of dinner and the hour of rest. No 
scratcher should be asked to wheel a bar- 
row; it destroys the perfect scheme of> 
his existence, and turns a mild philosopher 
into a complaining victim. The true 
scratcher is a man of fine feeling, an 
unconscious artist, a dreamer, not a toiler; 
and as other artists specialise in one par- 
ticular subject, so he specialises in his 
own branch of gardening. He takes a 
rough and tangled bank and makes a pic- 
ture of it; he will tell you it is a picture, 
and help you to admire it as long as you 
like. The tools of his profession are few 
and simple: a broom well-worn and a 
rake that is all but toothless. With 
these he works transformations in a 
garden. 

113 


The House of D or n el l 

Set him to wheel a barrow and an ideal 
is destroyed; it is like asking Mr. Far- 
quharson to mix paint for the village car- 
penter, or Mr. Alfred Austin to compose 
Limericks. It is an outrage upon art and 
congruity, and the scratcher feels it as 
such. He becomes care-worn, bandy- 
legged, old; a suffering martyr whose pain 
moves one to take the barrow and to 
send him back to the futile gathering of 
leaves. 

But to cause a scratcher deeper pain 
(yet who would be so barbarous as to 
try?) it is only necessary to get him a 
new rake and broom. The sight of them 
sets him sniffing at once, for however ill- 
fitted his old ones may be to the practical 
needs of a gardener, he clings to them with 
an affection that associations alone can 
justify. He loves his old broom; it re- 
minds him of still winter days, when the 
garden paths hold all the warmth of the 
114 


The S crate her 

sun, and a man may dawdle round them, 
making believe that it is summer. It is 
thus with all old things: old clothes, old 
friends, old brooms. Associations make 
them dear to us, so that we resent the 
coming of new things. 

The scratcher has kept that broom of 
his, a handful of twigs tied to a stake, 
for many years, and it has become to him 
a precious relic, growing more precious 
as its twigs decrease. He hides it jealously 
each night in a secret hole beneath a 
rhododendron bush. The tool-house is un- 
worthy of his treasure, and he would rather 
lodge it in a bower contrived by himself 
in defiance of law, where it can repose 
amid familiar surroundings, and in com- 
pany with the toothless rake. Both rake 
and broom are weather-worn and long past 
work, the leaves treat their interference 
with contempt, and they prolong an hour’s 
task to the extent of a whole day. Yet 
1 15 


The House of D or n ell 

the scratcher clings to them; he will have 
none of your brand-new besoms or rakes 
with rows of teeth like sharks. If he is 
given new tools, he will look at them with 
deep distrust. He will examine the broom, 
shake his head at it, sniff at it, and if 
he does condescend to use it, it will not 
be till he has reduced its bushiness with 
a knife. A new rake he does not mind 
so much; a few tugs among the long grass 
and the teeth will come out naturally. 
But it is only when he has reformed the 
new to the pattern of the old that he 
recovers his habitual peace and se- 
renity. 

The scratcher is an artist by instinct 
and tradition. To see him switch the 
leaves out of a bush with the two teeth 
at one corner of his rake is to realise 
the true beauty of futility. There is 
something admirable in the way he per- 
sists against all arguments of common 
ii 6 


The Scratcher 

sense, something archaic, something that 
speaks of the dim past when time was 
of no account. The example of patient 
industry would be perfect, were it not so 
obviously in vain. Nobody can argue with 
a scratcher, because he has a fund of 
obstinacy, and an endless store of experi- 
ence from which to quote. He knows his 
job far better than you do, and makes 
it plain that he does. If you observe that 
he is not getting on very fast with his 
work, he will first look surprised, then 
incredulous, and lastly injured. If you 
persist, reminding him that life is short 
and that the garden is large, he will turn 
up his rake and examine it reflectively. 
Then he will say that “ she ” needs some 
new teeth in her, and that, after he has 
got his knife sharpened, he will proceed 
to the wood-shed and cut some. That, of 
course, would mean a whole day 

wasted, so in despair you leave him 
117 


The House of D or n ell 

to deal with the rubbish in his own 
way. He sees you go and winks sol- 
emnly. 

Sometimes scratchers go in herds or 
bands; then they are called “policy men,” 
and the name seems to fit them. Their 
policy is to devise a system by which 
ten men can do the work of one; it is a 
wholesome policy and keeps them occu- 
pied, if not busy. They help each other 
systematically; there is no confusion, no 
haste, no unseemly running to and fro; 
they work like a machine, gently, silently, 
unemotionally. They work in unison, and 
they stop in unison, with an accuracy no 
machine could surpass. If they can see 
a bit of the road, they stop to watch every 
motor-car go past; if a carriage comes 
up the avenue they stop to gaze after it, 
if there is a cow in a field they stop to 
observe it, from time to time. If the 
master comes along they scratch as those 
1 1 8 


The S crate her 

scratch who see nothing in the world be- 
yond dead leaves. 

Seldom does the scratched calm give 
way. It takes a violent shock to rouse 
him, and I have only once seen the deed 
accomplished. He was one of a band of 
policy men, a venerable person, a patri- 
arch among scratchers, and as deaf, to use 
his own description, “ as a beetle.” He 
had never been known to hurry, never 
been seen to run, and his work was a 
mystery, carried on in the middle of the 
road with a small rake. A motor-car 
was responsible for his lapse from dig- 
nity. It came upon him from behind 
with a terrific screech, and my old friend 
jumped. Jumped fair behind a tree, 
round which his beard projected, wag- 
ging at a cloud of dust. “ Hell and 
Tommy!” I heard him observe. “ Hell 
and Tommy!” The remark summed up 
the situation, and the incident explains 
119 


The House of Dornell 

why the old scratcher now works cfir up 
the bank. \\ 

From my bedroom window I have 
looked out at dewy dawn upon the 
scratchers. They do not disturb the tran- 
quillity of the scene; there is nothing in 
their actions to suggest life’s endless toil 
and endeavour, and their clothes are just 
the colour of withered leaves. At that 
time of the morning they are generally 
smoking pipes, and the smell of tobacco 
blends with the smell of earth as a sort 
of incense rising to salute the morn. I 
could envy that band of scratchers. In 
the midst of worry and disappointment 
I have envied them their peace. How 
pleasant it would be to exchange my lot 
for theirs, and to pass the days in gentle 
toil among the garden lawns and paths! 
To wield the toothless rake and stubbly 
broom; to watch the motor-cars go past; 
to feel interest in the movements of a cow, 


120 


The S crate her 


and to feel that here, amid the trees and 
dead leaves, I might be as far removed 
from the world and worldly affairs as a 
monk of old in a company of brethren, 
tilling an old, grey garden to the sound 
of an abbey bell. 


121 


XII 


LITTLE CUPID 

On the top of the summer-house, he stands, 
Little Cupid made of lead. He has wings 
spread airily, a bow, and a quiver full 
of arrows at his back. He is a dainty 
little Cupid, a plump little Cupid, but 
dangerous, were he to swoop upon you 
from that perch of his. Lead is solid 
metal from which to mould a god of 
love, and I have sometimes wondered if 
a cynic fashioned him to point a moral, 
or to raise a sneer. A summer-house is 
suggestive of romance, and a little Cupid — 
But a true cynic would have modelled 
him in gold, which is heavier than lead, 
and shines more prettily. 

Still, there he is, and his little, fat legs 
are solidly set on a round block of wood 
Y 


122 


Little Cupid 

that crowns the hatch. He is very like 
The Baa-lamb, though it does not do to 
say so, and from the summer-house 
he looks straight down on Caiman’s 
yard. 

Perhaps, on a quiet summer evening 
when Caiman smokes his pipe, he glances 
up at Little Cupid and has — thoughts. 
Who knows? There may be another side 
to Caiman’s nature that is not wholly 
mechanical, and he may forget the dynamos 
just for half an hour. More probably, 
however, his mind is running on The Stink 
Machine, to remember which always in- 
duces some pensiveness, and Little Cupid, 
resembling The Baa-lamb as he does, 
naturally attracts his gaze. Cupid’s arrow 
is aimed at Caiman’s eye; it recalls to 
his memory the model Bleriot, and then 
he smiles, shaking his head at the little 
god. The summer-house has a strip of 
garden to itself, railed in by a rustic 
123 


The House of D o r n ell 

fence, and a flagged path leads to the 
door. Inside — well, now I think of it, 
I have never been inside the summer- 
house. The door is locked and the key 
is lost. Perhaps romance lies sleeping 
within, and Little Cupid on the roof is 
merely a sign of occupancy. And yet 
the summer-house, by itself, is not roman- 
tic, nor does it tempt romance by hiding 
shyly. It stands on a hill, and the long 
path up to it is bare of shelter. Besides 
the only window faces Caiman’s yard, 
and suggests dynamos rather than hearts. 
If ever two fond mortals want to sit 
within the summer-house at Dornell, they 
will have to find the key, seek it high and 
low, ask for it, and set the household 
speculating hopefully. No, Little Cupid 
is a sturdy guardian, and his arrows are 
pointed to defend his realm against the 
passion he symbolises. Give lovers the 
bosky shade of Tempe, where the burn 
124 


Little Cupid 

laughs softly beneath the hazel thickets, 
the summer-house is not for such as they 
are. 

It is a shameless thing to hoist love 
naked on a housetop, and only a Cupid 
made of lead could bear the indignity 
without a blush. This Little Cupid can- 
not blush — he does not want to blush — 
and the virtue of modesty is not in him. 
He is a self-satisfied fellow, nothing dis- 
turbs him, not even the birds when they 
perch upon his shoulder to preen their 
wings in mockery of his. In winter time 
the boys snowball him, in spring the 
scratchers come with rakes and brooms to 
tidy up his garden plot, and one year 
a man with a pot of paint climbed the 
thatch and painted his pedestal green. 
That was a man without a soul; he hung 
his cap on Cupid’s head and called him 
Billy Button. Such indignities has Cupid 
to suffer; yet still the little wretch sub- 
125 


The House of D or n ell 

limely poses, as though his chubby form 
were not of the same metal as the water- 
pipes. 

I often wonder what the scratchers think 
of Little Cupid; whether to them his 
wings, bow and arrows convey a subtle 
meaning, or whether they regard him 
simply as a freakish ornament of ques- 
tionable delicacy. In the garden are two 
grim statues of more than life-size, rep- 
resenting Scottish heroes, Bruce and Wal- 
lace, I believe, each in Highland costume, 
and each armed with a short, Roman 
sword. On their heads are Roman hel- 
mets, and they stand against a wall, side 
by side, threatening, huge, foolish. Their 
attitudes are paralytic, and their beards 
are carved scrupulously true to nature. 
The scratchers understand them, and ap- 
preciate the conscientious chiselling; but 
as for Cupid, I have my doubts. They 
probably think he would look brighter 
126 


Little Cupid 

and better in a coat of good, white paint. 
As it is, he has some resemblance to a 
tomb-stone cherub — a cherub grown com- 
plete — and in a churchyard cherubs are 
always painted lead-colour. Little Cupid 
on the summer-house! What is your 
opinion of scratchers and the rest of us 
dull men upon the earth? You are con- 
temptuous, I know, because you are a god 
and stand on a green pedestal; but would 
you like it better if we came to woo you 
in your bower? Or would you tumble 
through the thatch and break our heads? 
Some day, The Baa-lamb or The Beloved 
will find the key, and scandalise the old 
spiders and spinster wood-lice with their 
frolics in the summer-house. They will 
shout through the window to Caiman, and 
Caiman will imagine that Cupid has come 
to life, till he recognises The Baa-lamb. 
Then he will climb up the bank and have 
dirt thrown on his head. How would 


127 


The House of D or n el l 

you like that, Little Cupid with the scorn- 
ful brow? 

There have been some sly jokes made 
about the summer-house; The Colonel, our 
old friend with the Victoria Cross, is face- 
tious, once at least, during every visit he 
makes to Dornell, on the subject, and we 
have learned from him what a humorous 
thing it is to be in love. Love, according 
to The Colonel, is all kissing and cuddling 
in a summer-house. No wonder Cupid is 
scornful. The Colonel would degrade 
him to a vulgar level, and our Little Cupid 
is not vulgar, whatever else he may be. 
There is grace and airiness in his pose, 
a pert seductiveness in those naked limbs 
of his, and a sparkle of naughtiness all 
over him that is but thinly hid by his 
eternal affectation of indifference. They 
tell me that he came from Rome, from 
some old garden villa of the south, where 
the long, warm days are made for love 
128 


Little Cupid 

and idleness. Here, down the bank below 
his summer-house, the trailing rose-sprays 
drop their petals on the grass; but Cupid 
curls a lip, even in the time of roses, for 
ours is but a chilly land to him, and our 
blood runs too calmly for the little boy 
of the ardent south. 

How Bruce and Wallace must have 
resented the coming of this foreigner! I 
can see them, grimly ignoring him, pre- 
tending not to know that he was there, 
yet all the while acutely conscious of his 
horrid little bow and arrows. They 
grasped their Roman swords more stiffly, 
stood straighter against the wall, till their 
Roman helmets tilted over their eyes, and 
thus they have remained ever since; dig- 
nified, foolish, paralytic. Little Cupid has 
long ago given them up in despair, regard- 
ing them just as he regards some mortals 
who make a virtue of ignoring love, think- 
ing them just as ridiculous. To lean 
129 


The House of D or n ell 

against a wall and frown perpetually, to 
maintain a defensive attitude against all 
neighbours, and to hate him, seems pitiful 
behaviour to Cupid; he will not waste an 
arrow on Bruce or Wallace; he aims at 
Caiman instead, whom he feels to be 
human. 

I should sometimes like to know what 
opinion The Kind One has of Cupid, and 
whether he considers him beneath all seri- 
ous thought. The Kind One may have 
left the fanciful idea of love behind when 
he took to brooding on sunsets from the 
lofty pine-woods. It may be to him some- 
thing more than prettiness, something great 
and noble that has its origin in pain; and 
yet the scar he bears was made by an 
arrow, shot from a bow by the same 
fat imp we call Little Cupid, who, in 
spite of his youth and innocence, is much 
more dangerous than Bruce or Wallace 
with their frown and Roman swords. He 


130 


Little Cupid 

is older too, far older. He has the gift 
of perpetual youth, that is all, and the 
mischief of a child, though his knowledge 
goes right back to the dim beginning of 
the world. 

Love does not grow old. We grow old 
and grey in trying to curb his wilfulness, 
and sorrowful in trying to understand his 
ways, while he shoots arrows at us and 
laughs. He is a child and god in one. 
A child when we scold him and weep 
over his shortcomings, a god when he 
smites us with his arrows and brings us 
to earth helpless. But as god or child 
we continue to do him honour, and his 
form graces the tops of our summer-houses 
in the shape of a pretty boy. We want 
to propitiate the tyrant, but he sees 
through our attempts, and deceives us with 
a bearing of indifference. Then he hits 
us when we least expect it, and we go 
away to abuse him as a rascal. 

131 


The House of D or n e 1 1 

Little Cupid, Little Cupid on the sum- 
mer-house! For what anguish are you 
not responsible? But still I keep a soft 
corner in my heart for you, godling with 
the chubby legs. I like to see you up 
there on your wooden pedestal, your wings 
outspread to catch the breeze, while your 
feet, so firmly planted, show that you 
never can fly from earth. You are always 
with us. When winter powders you with 
snow, or April brings the birds to perch 
upon your shoulder. I like to feel that 
you are there at all seasons, watching the 
deserted summer-house, till one of us un- 
locks the door. 


13 2 


XIII 


THE DOGS OF DORNELL 

Don is an Airdale terrier, and counts as 
not the least important inmate of The 
House of Dornell. On fine summer days 
he is generally to be found on the steps 
outside the front door, where he figures 
as a watch-dog endowed with the hos- 
pitable instincts of a fine old English gen- 
tleman. His aspect is rather encouraging 
than forbidding; he seems to invite rather 
than repel chance comers, and on this 
account he is a failure as a watch-dog, 
though as a host his conduct leaves nothing 
to be desired. He has a stump of a tail, 
which he twists sideways as he comes 
forward to do the honours of the house, 
and an expression of bland courtesy that 
is not spoilt when he hangs out his tongue. 

1 33 


The House of D or n ell 

He is so free from all mistrust, that I have 
often wondered whether he would detect 
a robber, should one call. I can imagine 
Don trotting innocently at the heels of 
the man who has just filched the spoons, 
and I can see him wag his tail as the 
thief departs, unconscious, unsuspicious, 
hospitable to the last. No, as a watch-dog 
I fear that Don is a fraud. 

As a sportsman, a companion, a de- 
lightful member of the household, he is 
all that a dog can be, and even the rabbits 
are not seriously flustered by his pursuit. 
If, from his place upon the steps, he sees 
a rabbit, he is after it like a flash; the 
sporting instincts within him are roused, 
he bays, yelps, and tears up the gravel 
with his feet. The rabbit seems bored, 
and lopes away with dignity to the nearest 
burrow, while Don, the murderous sports- 
man, turns a somersault across a wire fence. 
Then he returns, on three legs, blinking 
i34 


The Dogs of D or n ell 

to the steps. He knows that he has made 
a foolish exhibition of himself, and that 
the rabbit is laughing at him; therefore 
he pretends to have been for a little stroll 
in the country, and to have returned be- 
cause the weather is too warm for exer- 
cise. Only once have I seen him with a 
rabbit in his mouth, and then it was only 
the hind legs I saw for an instant — the 
hind legs of a baby rabbit disappearing 
down Don’s red throat. The performance 
was crude, I thought, and Don’s methods 
lacked refinement, especially when he chose 
my bed as a place in which to sleep off 
his debauch. 

There is a matter-of-fact simplicity 
about this dog. He has no consciousness 
of doing wrong at any time, and he would 
be grieved were you to hint that he had 
committed a fault. He would complain 
to his master, who would most certainly 
take his part. Still, there are enough good 
135 


The House of D or n ell 

qualities in Don to make him admirable. 
He is honest, and he is generous. He 
allows The Baa-lamb to share a room 
with him at night, and does not ask for 
more than half the bed, and when he 
comes to visit me in the morning he always 
apologises for lying on my chest. He 
says things with his tongue, just as human 
beings do, only he has to stick his tongue 
outside, so that its expression may be seen 
and understood. 

The Master of the House owns Don, 
and to him the old dog is perfection. He 
holds that no animal on earth, and very 
few folk, can equal him in wisdom and 
nobility. He is jealous of a word against 
the old dog, and Don frankly acquiesces 
when pointed to as an example of all canine 
virtues. With half-closed eyes he poses as 
a living monument of spotless integrity. 

But we cannot all be perfect, and the 
virtues of Don show up the flaws in 
136 


The Dogs of Dornell 

Nikko’s character by contrast. Nikko is a 
Japanese pug, the special torment of My 
Lady, who combs him every day and loves 
him just because he is a torment. His 
looks make him lovable, but if he had 
to depend on qualities of heart alone, I 
fear that we should style him an abom- 
ination. He is the sort of dog to steal 
chops from the larder, and bury them in 
sofa cushions, to attack other dogs, and 
then run yelping to his mistress for pro- 
tection; the sort of dog to sit at an upper 
window and snarl at fox hounds. He loves 
his own stomach better than anything else 
in the world, and he cries when it is 
empty. Don has his regular meals, like 
a Christian gentleman, but Nikko has the 
cravings of a famished wolf. He prefers 
bits of stolen meat, raw with plenty of 
blood about them, but his proper diet is 
cold chicken. He eats his chicken to the 
last morsel, it is true, though all the time 
137 


The House of Dornell 
his mind is fixed on better things; on cer- 
tain savoury garbage that lies buried in the 
garden, forbidden delicacies to be dug up 
and eaten when nobody is by. 

At tea time there is always a rivalry 
between The Master of the House with 
“ the old dog ” and My Lady with Nikko. 
Each feels that the other’s favourite is 
getting more than a fair share of bread 
and butter, and each accuses the other’s 
dog of greed. Then the dogs have to be 
consoled with pretty speeches, till Don, 
who is not by nature emotional, becomes 
full of sentiment, and lays a paw upon 
his master’s knee. Nikko scrambles for 
tit-bits. There is no silly sentiment about 
him, and his nobler self, if he has one, is 
swamped in an ignoble desire for cake. 

Once there came a day of retribution 
for Nikko. He fell into the fountain 
among the gold-fish and water lilies. 
Greed was his undoing, and a notion to 
138 


The Dogs of Dornell 

taste fish. He got a ducking instead of 
a meal, and a fright that was increased to 
blind terror when a gardener rescued him 
by the tail. Still, he remains a greedy 
dog, and if we would cure his vice, it 
behooves us to buy an alligator to live 
in the fountain where the gold-fish are. 

Nikko is pampered and caressed, but 
the family’s affection is centred on Don. 
Nikko keeps his heart in his stomach; 
Don’s eyes reflect a better state of things 
within him. He sleeps with The Baa- 
lamb, and I have looked in to see both 
their heads on one pillow, Don with a 
stout foreleg across The Baa-lamb’s chest. 
There is a perfect understanding between 
these two. The dog follows the boy with 
adoring gaze, and when The Baa-lamb 
takes his head and whispers in his ear, the 
magic of love makes Don comprehend. 
The black, wet nose is uplifted in reply, 
and he speaks through his eyes, swearing 
i39 


The House of Dornell 

eternal fidelity in a glance. When The 
Baa-lamb is away, Don sleeps in the wood- 
shed with the cats, an indignity he bears 
with philosophic calm. He knows that in 
a few weeks he will be rescued from such 
company, and that the civilised ease of 
a bed will be his again. Nikko sleeps on 
an eiderdown quilt; he is afraid of cats, 
especially at night. 

Don and Nikko are sociable dogs; they 
frequent drawing-rooms and look on men 
and women as their natural companions. 
Not so Mr. Stinkins. Mr. Stinkins is a 
misanthrope, probably because he has got 
no tail, a retiring, moody hermit; a nervous 
old gentleman, whose sentiments must have 
been soured by a misfortune early in life. 
This dog belongs to Cynthia, and there- 
fore he is a lucky dog, and I must do him 
the justice to say that he does seem less 
melancholy with her than with the rest 
of us. If we meet him alone with Cynthia 
140 


The Dogs of Dornell 

he may be frisking in a temperate man- 
ner, but if anybody speaks to him, he im- 
mediately thinks of the place where his 
tail should be, and retires into gloomy 
aloofness. I believe Mr. Stinkins is 
Dutch. He formerly belonged to a lady 
in London, who used to take him for 
drives in the park with a pink bow under 
his chin. He probably grew weary then 
from too much ease and too wide an ex- 
perience of the world, or his nature may 
have become permanently soured from hav- 
ing to wear a pink cravat. Now he lives 
in a house where there are other dogs, 
and children; noisy, healthy animals, who 
would tweak his tail, if he had one, and 
from whom the soul of Mr. Stinkins re- 
coils. You may call him a good dog, a 
beautiful dog — a beast. He will only turn 
his back with a shiver of disgust, and if 
you offer him food, he seems to suspect 
poison in it. 

141 


The House of Dornell 

Cynthia is fond of him; she protects 
him from ridicule, and has a name for 
him that is not Mr. Stinkins. Anthony, 
she calls him; Mr. Anthony Stinkins is a 
compromise for her sake. I think he 
spends most of his day in Cynthia’s room, 
for I have seen the end of his nose peering 
round the window curtain; but if he is 
addressed — by any name — he withdraws 
immediately. With dogs he is no more 
familiar than with human beings. If Don 
brushes against him he shrinks with ner- 
vous horror, and even Nikko, who can 
rouse most folk to a game, gets from Mr. 
Anthony Stinkins nothing more than a 
glance of loathing. Cynthia loves him 
because he is old and lonely; she loves 
The Kind One for the same reason, and 
me she loves because — well, I do not care 
why, so long as she loves me. Some per- 
sons are born to champion those the world 
derides; Cynthia is one of these, and her 
142 


The Dogs of Dornell 

dear nature looks for no reward. It is 
enough that certain beings need cham- 
pioning; she moves to their support at 
once, whether the luckless one be dog or 
man. That is why I consider Mr. An- 
thony Stinkins a dog to be envied, in spite 
of his nerves. 

Dogs and children! On the lawn be- 
neath the cedar-trees I like to think of 
you. In the sultry afternoons, when tired 
of play, you come and squat about me. I 
make an excellent arm-chair, no doubt, and 
a pillow for your head, Beloved. The 
Beloved would lie still and talk, if the 
rest would let him — I wish they would, 
instead of shoving grass down his neck 
and mine. Don would sleep in the shade, 
were it not for Nikko. The only one of 
us at peace is Mr. Anthony Stinkins, pro- 
tected by the arm of Cynthia, and soothed 
by her caress. 


i43 


XIV 


ROBERT 

ROBERT belongs to the harmonious order 
of those who gain a wage by scratching; 
that is to say, he sweeps and weeds paths 
in the garden, and makes heaps of dead 
leaves for the wind to blow away. He 
might be styled King of Scratchers, or 
Deadleaf Emperor, for in his profession 
he stands pre-eminent, both as an artistic 
wielder of old rakes, and as a peerless 
simulator of industry. He is an elderly 
man; an old man, some folk might call 
him; but he owns neither to age nor to 
decrepitude, and his very gait is a defiance 
to time and the years that pull him down. 
He has a club-foot, which in walking gives 
his steps a peculiar flourish and a sug- 
gestion of triumphant progress. His fig- 
144 


Robert 


ure is spare and monkey-like, his face 
brown and red and wrinkled, but he has 
a dignity that physical defects cannot mar, 
and a confidence in himself that makes 
him a rebel to authority. He is 
grandiloquent, ready to argue on the 
slightest provocation, and full of personal 
reminiscences, nicely flavoured to suit di- 
verse tastes. 

Robert was, in earlier life, a trainer of 
greyhounds, and his sporting instinct sur- 
vives, bursting forth in shrill notes of 
criticism when he sees a farm dog course a 
rabbit down a hedgerow. He is an 
authority on every breed of dogs, and blind 
puppies are brought to him for judgment, 
and their fate hangs on his verdict. The 
heart of Robert is tender toward dogs of 
all degrees, and he holds little, blind pups 
in rough and knotty hands that seem to 
grow suddenly gentle at the touch of their 
warm helplessness. His blue eyes twinkle 
145 


The House of Dornell 

as he looks at them, and then he will relate 
the story of Benedick, the famous hound 
he saved, many years ago, from a watery 
death, and which lived to win silver cups 
and fame. If the owner of the pups be 
credulous, or of a sanguine nature, he may, 
perhaps, imagine Benedicks to lurk among 
his litter. If not — why, then, the horse- 
pond. But Robert feels he has acted the 
part of a just and merciful judge. 

It is a change in life for a trainer of 
hounds to become a scratcher; but Robert 
looks on scratching as an amateurish sort 
of occupation for his declining years, an 
occupation more than a profession, and at 
Dornell we all understand this, and appre- 
ciate the spirit in which he consents to 
weed the avenue. Nobody gives orders to 
Robert; a hint is as far as any one may 
go; a hint subtilely implying that without 
his care the place would run to rack and 
ruin. Robert believes himself to be the 
146 


Robert 


prop and mainstay of the establishment, 
and his toil is sweetened by a conscious- 
ness of value to the landscape that each 
stroke imparts. 

He likes to be near the gate and public 
road, where he can see the world pass, and 
lure acquaintances from their proper busi- 
ness to admire his work. He takes a pride 
in his work, and lingers over details with 
an artistic pleasure in effect, so that a day’s 
labour is to him a sort of poem. He has 
a collection of tools, which he keeps in 
holes and corners, never where they should 
be kept, and sometimes strange discoveries 
are made of rusty implements grown over 
in the shrubs. They are Robert’s hoes and 
rakes, put past with care for next year’s 
weeding on the drive. I have an idea 
that he likes a mellow tone about his 
implements, and that the sight of new 
wood and iron offends a delicate sense 
within him. He feels that, like himself, 
147 


The House of Dornell 
their colour scheme should match the tint 
of withered leaves and twigs, and blend 
with their surroundings in shades of 
russet-brown and grey. It may be an 
artistic instinct that influences him to leave 
his tools about, or it may be pure obstinacy 
against the decrees of those who have pro- 
vided tool-sheds. 

With a little tin bucket and his hoe, 
Robert makes a great stir among the weeds, 
and he likes the avenue best, because from 
it he can run into the wood to empty his 
bucket, without being called upon to use 
a barrow. He hates wheelbarrows, as all 
true scratchers should, but he has even 
less patience with the merry wind, and 
abuses it for hunting leaves into the open 
from the cover of bushes where they lie 
unseen. He is an artist without doubt, and 
as a transformer of rough banks into 
smooth and gracious slopes he is un- 
equalled. Summer or winter, rain or 
148 


Robert 


shine, he is always to be found at the task 
of improving the landscape. 

At times his occupation calls him down 
from the avenue to the shrubberies near the 
house, and here he is industrious to the 
sound of his own singing. He pipes in a 
high old voice as he sweeps, and always 
has an eye for possible company. If he 
can get an audience, even one small child, 
to listen while he talks, he is happy; and 
he can work and talk at the same time 
with a cunning that defies reproach. He 
trots about, ambles, canters, with that club- 
foot of his describing strange figures as he 
goes, and all the time he chatters like a 
jackdaw. He knows the history of many 
families and the history of their dogs, and 
what he does not know he supplies from 
fancy’s store. His lying is said to be 
“notorious,” but his presence of mind never 
deserts him. If he comes upon his master 
frowning at a gap in the laurels, or star- 
149 


The House of D or n ell 

ing at a track through the ornamental 
shrubs, he will range up beside him full 
of specious innocence and surprise. He 
is the honest workman, the trusted servant, 
deploring other folks’ wilful damage; the 
outraged artist lamenting vandalism. He 
is shrilly garrulous, righteously indignant. 
Some person has made these gaps and 
tracks, and Robert wishes he could catch 
him at it! He would be in no condition 
to make gaps after Robert had done with 
him; but that sort of person is most diffi- 
cult to catch, working his wickedness, as 
he does, at dead of night. However, some 
day — Robert shakes his head with dark 
and meaning looks. He is unabashed by 
the twinkle of his own tin bucket at the 
end of a leafy tunnel through the pink 
azaleas. 

But to see Robert work, really work^ 
till the sweat pours down his face, one 
must wait for the winter and the bonfire 


150 


Robert 


season. Then Robert sings his shrillest, 
hurries to and fro, and actually seeks a 
wheelbarrow. He collects a pile of rub- 
bish, sticks, leaves, weeds, old flower-stems 
and faded garden stuff, till he has a mound 
of proper bulk for a roaring fire. He 
calls his fire “ a roarer” and the clippings 
from the laurel shrubs make it crackle 
and blaze right handsomely. What a sight 
it is to see old Robert hopping round his 
fire! How grim his wrinkled face be- 
comes as, with a pitchfork he flings on 
fresh fuel. He is like a quaint old demon, 
and might be roasting souls, instead of 
burning docks and nettles. The primitive 
man leaps up in him to meet the dancing 
flames; he is no longer an artist, but a 
crude, sweating man instinct with the spirit 
of destruction. If he had his way he 
would uproot the garden, and feed his 
roarer with our winter kale and broccoli. 
At such strenuous times his head is merely 

151 


The House of Dornell 

a peg on which to hang the singed rem- 
nants of a cap, which drops askew above 
one ear. 

I have seen him in the dusk of a winter 
evening still busy among the flying sparks, 
and the red light throws up a goblin form 
against a background of dark shades. 
After school is over, little boys steal down 
from the village to roast potatoes in the 
feathery ash, and to assist Robert in his 
toil. Then there seems to be a band of 
goblins round the fire, and their high- 
pitched voices mingle with the crackle of 
the roarer. The village boys have but 
slight reverence for their elders, and get 
in Robert’s way till he cuffs their ears; 
but even then they soon come back from 
flinging dirt at him out of the darkness, 
for the sheer delight of witnessing destruc- 
tion and assisting it. 

The glow can be seen far off, and the 
shapes of those who flit from light to 
152 


Robert 


shadow as the veering breeze drives the 
hot smoke wisps in one direction or an- 
other, and their actions are clearly out- 
lined. It makes me envious to see those 
boys plunging for the hot potatoes, and I 
feel again the smart of blistered fingers 
as they shake theirs yonder. Many years 
it is since I have eaten singed potatoes 
from the ashes of a fire, but the flavour is 
sharp upon my memory’s palate, and still 
my nostrils hold the smell of smoke that 
clung to hair and garments all next day. 
Robert would be astonished, probably 
shocked, were I to bring my share of 
potatoes to roast, but The Baa-lamb and 
The Beloved will be home at Christmas 
time, and then for an ash-seasoned cooking 
at dusk! 

A boy has all but tripped up old Robert; 
he has got his baked potato, and a cuff 
on the ear to boot. I wonder how much of 
envy and remembrance was in the mind of 
i53 


The House of Dornell 

Robert when he gave that cuff, or whether 
he was but vindicating the dignity of age? 

The leaping flames die down; there is 
no more rubbish left to burn, and Robert 
thinks of home and supper. He gets his 
jacket, and prepares to go, but just before 
he leaves, he flicks from the ashes the last 
two blackened potatoes for the urchin 
whose ears he has lately cuffed. It is a 
kindly touch to end the day. It makes 
me think of the little blind pups, and 
doubt the rigour of his hand on young 
human ears. He limps off with the boys 
at his heels, and long after their figures 
have melted in the gathering darkness, I 
can hear the clatter of their foot-falls, and 
the sound of laughter. 


XV 


THE VALE OF TEMPE 

The Vale of Tempe lies behind Dornell, 
and is sheltered by the pine-clad hill where 
The Kind One loves to wander. He sel- 
dom goes into Tempe; it is too calm a 
place for him, too suggestive of content- 
ment with which his mind is not in tune, 
and the lights are not thrown in sharp 
contrasting bands, as among the pine- 
boles. But to a nature tolerably at ease 
Tempe is a spot of many charms, a spot 
to linger in and to enjoy. It has for me a 
special attraction when entered from the 
high track along the hill-face. The rough 
ground ends at Tempe; there are no grey, 
unclothed boulders, but every stone and 
tree-stump is green with moss, or buried 
in the fern. It is a dip into a softer world 
i55 


The House of D or n el l 

of undergrowths, a leafy hollow that 
changes its tints with the seasons. The 
pine-woods are changeless; Tempe is al- 
ways changing, and each month brings 
something to adorn it, or takes away some- 
thing that seems only to leave the rest more 
beautiful. As you come into it the path 
slopes rather steeply, and is fringed by 
sweeping bracken fronds that brush knee- 
high at every step, and hang in green or 
russet patches down the banks on both sides 
of the way. At the bottom of the slope 
the path widens out upon a little flat beside 
the burn and stepping-stones. Up and 
down the glen is a tangle of vegetation; 
whichever way you look are hawthorn 
bushes nearly covered up by twining 
honeysuckle, hazel clumps that shelter 
beds of fern and ivy, while among them 
are small open spaces that reflect the sky 
in spring when the hyacinths are in bloom. 
It is cool, sweet-smelling, secluded, and 
156 


The Vale of Tempe 

the bum makes a ceaseless murmur 
through its length. 

Further up the hills this same bum is 
a rushing gutter, but it sobers itself in 
Tempe and leaves off fretting over rocks 
to glide away beneath the dappled shade 
of copse-wood. The voice of the glen is 
a sleepy song; there is no sighing there as 
on the pine slopes, but only a contented 
murmuring in the leaves and flowing 
water. Yet, by glancing up, you can see 
the hills, and the silver flashing torrent that 
runs so smoothly here. 

Tempe is unlike the other parts of Dor- 
nell ; it is one memory, rather than a crowd 
of memories, and recollections of it blend 
together as a pleasant sort of picture that 
has no salient lines. Few people come to 
it. Boys, perhaps, in April after birds’ 
nests, or a pair of lovers on a Sunday 
afternoon. The attraction of the place 

lies in its seclusion, and in a certain air 
157 


The House of Dornell 

of mystery that the sound of hidden water 
creates. One can go away to Tempe and 
lose the world for a time; steep the mind 
in hushed forgetfulness, or let imagination 
sport at will to the singing of the burn; 
and then return to find life full of sun- 
shine and cheery bustle. 

There are wood-nymphs in Tempe, or 
I dreamed of one seen only for an instant 
between tree-trunks. She fled so quickly 
that when, at the stepping-stones, I met 
My Lady, I could not be quite sure fancy 
had not played me a trick. My Lady says 
there are no wood-nymphs in Tempe, and 
laughs my vision into nothingness. I am 
compelled to believe her, but all the same, 
I have a hankering to meet my brown- 
eyed nymph once more. I wonder why 
she ran away? She mistook me for Pan, 
perhaps, although I only smoke a pipe. 

Sometimes, on a still winter day, when 
Tempe holds the faintest mist, and the 
158 


The Vale of Tempe 

brown leaves are sodden underfoot, you 
may hear a distant rumble and a crash. 
This is the noise of a great rock, loosened 
by the wet, making an avalanche of itself 
down the hillside through the pine-trees. 
Every winter some of the big rocks come 
tumbling from the heights, and many of 
the tree-trunks bear marks of scars where 
the flying mass has struck them. Blows 
like that make even a pine-tree shiver. 
Some of the rocks get lodged against the 
trees, and those that have fallen a long 
while ago are deeply sunk in the bark, 
and green with age. Others remain just 
balanced, and the temptation is always 
great to set them toppling with a push. 
It is a sort of fearful joy to see them bound 
away, and to listen to the splintering of 
brushwood in the valley far below. 

But apart from artificial avalanches, the 
foresters’ men are quite accustomed to 
the downward charge of boulders, and 
i59 


The House of D or n ell 

take cover when they hear a distant warn- 
ing overhead. The hillside is so steep that 
a stone, once set rolling, gathers speed by 
the way, leaping higher among the tree- 
trunks, till at last it plunges into the 
thickets that fringe the lower slopes. If 
a stone falls conveniently, the foresters use 
it for a seat at dinner-time, and speculate 
between bites upon the fate of a man 
should he be caught by such a monster. It 
is only during winter that these avalanches 
occur; in the summer months you could 
sleep all day beneath the shadow of the 
rocks, and nothing worse would fall on 
you than the stigma of laziness, but there 
are always the grey stragglers among the 
pine stems, the boulders poised ready for 
descent, and the scars on bark or branches 
to remind you that peace here is not a 
lasting state. 

No avalanches descend into the Vale 
of Tempe, no intrusive violence mars its 
160 


The Vale of Tempe 

calm, and nothing falls there heavier than 
a twirling leaf, or snowflake. The noisiest 
thing is the burn, and its voice is musical, 
except in winter when the floods swell its 
murmur to a roar. But even a flood does 
not last long, and all the time it does last 
a chorus of protest swells up in Tempe. 
The swaying grasses are agitated on the 
banks, and the alder-trees stretch down vain 
branches to stem the rush. They seem to nod 
and argue with the water, but the burn is a 
self-willed thing, and spurns the branches 
till the storm is past. Then it smiles 
quite suddenly, like the brown eyes of a 
wood-nymph, and sings the glen to sleep. 

The sea and the sky and the river may be 
blue, but the little burn in Tempe is al- 
ways sparkling brown. It reminds me of 
some eyes I know, with their dancing 
lights and April changes, and it weeps, 
even as eyes weep, when the sorrowful 
seasons come upon it. In November 
161 


The House of Dornell 

/ 

when the sea-fog rolls inland, Tempe be- 
comes a place of mourning, and every twig 
or bending grass-plume drops tears upon 
the burn’s grey, saddened face. But this 
is a passing humour that few folk have 
seen, because on a November afternoon 
of fog the fireside is more attractive than 
a damp and weeping glen. Yet the same 
folk who shun Tempe in November are 
often those who miss its daybreak witchery 
in early spring, when each bud holds a 
dewdrop, and the burn is full of dimples 
round the stepping-tones. There is always 
a secret in the burn, and it is always 
laughing about it, or mocking those who 
try to find it out. Down by the stepping- 
stones the ripples are discreet and inno- 
cent; the burn tells nothing there in the 
open; but a little further on, where the 
bushes hide its course, it has a deal to say, 
if one could comprehend its language. It 
is a perverse trickle, a thing that will not 
162 


The Vale of T emp e 

be understood, and like Little Cupid on 
the summer-house, it mocks at us who 
are so dull. 

The bosky shade of Tempe is created 
for lovers; perhaps the burn reveals itself 
to them alone, and keeps its perverse moods 
for those who merely idle on its banks. 
Here in the wooded glen man by himself 
is an intruder; two, led by the spirit of 
romance, come down the path into a fairy- 
land that welcomes them. 

If you follow the burn through Tempe 
it will bring you out at last in the pleasure 
grounds of Dornell, where man has as- 
serted himself as the superior of nature. 
A retribution overtakes the burn, and it is 
forced to go decorously in harness. At 
one place they have made a cascade for it, 
and a pool where the water turns round 
and round; at another a bog-garden usurps 
its banks, and everywhere its course is 
hemmed in and twisted to suit the taste of 
163 


The House of Dornell 

man, the uncomprehending. There is a 
scornful look about the burn in the pleas- 
ure grounds. It winds in and out among 
the bamboo thickets, or is shaded by 
the large-leafed iris; but this is not 
Tempe, and where it is stemmed to make 
a lily-pond, the burn deposits mud. Be- 
low the cascade is a sort of glen; but the 
sides of it are smooth grass, and daffodils 
are not the hawthorn buds of Tempe. 
Sometimes the stream drifts a moment, 
pensive, but it has to do so many things — 
to leap, to spread itself out, to simulate 
wrath, to overcome obstacles placed across 
its path — that it has no leisure to be pen- 
sive, and can only hurry past to reach the 
big river, where it can go to sleep. 

I love the pleasure grounds of Dornell, 
the lawns, the cedar-trees and the old- 
w T orld garden; but the breath of Tempe 
comes down with the burn, and contrasts 
are not always good. If I had never seen 
164 


The Vale of Tempe 

Tempe, the ornamental waters of the 
pleasure grounds might bring to me a 
sense of satisfaction. If I could forget 
Tempe, our fine cascade would fill me with 
delight, and the iris beds would seem a 
natural setting for the burn. But out 
beyond the shrubby policies, I have a 
vision of deep shades and wayward ripples, 
of a leafy solitude untouched by man, and 
then I hear, faint and alluring from the 
wilds, a sound of laughter, which is as a 
call to draw me up-stream to the valley 
in the hills. 


XVI 


COUSIN ANN 

When Cousin Ann comes to stay at Dor- 
nell, there is always a stir in the house- 
hold, as upon the coming of royalty, and 
for a week before she arrives an air of 
preparation is noticeable all over the 
house. This is because Cousin Ann (she 
is never addressed without the cousinly 
prefix) is a great lady from the great 
world, whom it behoves us to honour. We 
are simple folk at Dornell, and we have 
an idea that Cousin Ann is rather formi- 
dable. She is stately in appearance, a 
trifle stout, perhaps, and seems to demand 
the best of everything by the very look 
of her. The softest arm-chair is hers by 
right, and her progress from one room to 
another is attended by a suite bearing 
1 66 


Cousin Ann 

cushions. I believe she is My Lady’s 
cousin, but we all call her Cousin Ann, 
and treat her with affectionate respect. 
She is a person whose standing in the 
world is so secure that she can dispense 
with the ordinary forms and phrases of 
civility, and be rude or charming as the 
humour takes her, which is very convenient 
for Cousin Ann. By virtue of her high 
estate she can do and say exactly what she 
likes; yawn when she feels tired, or praise 
us to our faces. In fact, she is a queen 
who can do no wrong, and we are as 
proud of her commendations as the loyalest 
subjects could be. 

The house is hers while she remains in 
it, though she herself reminds us that My 
Lady is the hostess, and we are retainers, 
courtiers round her throne. Cousin Ann 
has her special room at Dornell; it is the 
room opposite that one belonging to The 
Colonel, and when he and she visit us at 
167 


The House of D or n ell 

the same date, they meet on the landing 
about breakfast-time, and exchange civili- 
ties. The Colonel is on his best behaviour 
in the presence of Cousin Ann, and a shade 
more military than usual, as though he 
were wearing uniform with decorations to 
do her honour. He feels that he must 
look and act his best, and it is a feeling 
we all share when she appears among us. 
The Baa-lamb compares hands with The 
Beloved before meals, and white waist- 
coats of the richest are produced at dinner- 
time. Cynthia is combed and starched, till 
the thought of Cousin Ann weighs like an 
incubus upon her. She looks a Blessed 
Damozel, but she feels a demon under- 
neath her spotless garb. Yet, I am certain 
Cousin Ann loves the children, although 
their customs sometimes shock her, and 
she is permanently convinced that a great 
mistake has been made in their upbring- 
ing. She tells My Lady this, and My 
168 


Cousin Ann 

Lady meekly agrees, because she has never 
dared to contradict Cousin Ann in all her 
life. Nevertheless, I have seen Cousin 
Ann smile, and heard her chuckle, at some 
antic that should be, by rights, severely 
condemned. She has a delightful chuckle 
that shakes the golden drops in her ears, 
and when immediately afterwards she tries 
to frown, I feel that she is very human 
and lovable, in spite of her grand-world 
air. 

I cannot, to tell the truth, understand 
why Cousin Ann should be so held in awe 
by her relations. There is nothing very 
daunting in her aspect, and if she speaks 
her mind, it is the privilege of age to 
give advice, and of kinsfolk to be frank. 
Of the cousinly state she does not take un- 
due advantage, but she has a high sense of 
duty, apart from the idea of relationship, 
which a strain of humour keeps from 
growing irksome. The senses of duty and 
169 


The House of D or n ell 

humour struggling together make her 
seem at times unsympathetic, for to laugh 
in the wrong place is a serious fault in 
Cousin Ann’s opinion. 

My Lady is always on the defensive 
when she thinks the children are being 
criticised, and her anxiety on their account 
blinds her to the underlying tenderness of 
Cousin Ann’s remarks. And yet she knows 
that Cousin Ann is kind, and that she 
gives the children splendid gifts at 
Christmas. Everybody stands a little in 
awe of her, and does his best to please 
her, which is not difficult, because our 
great lady is really very simple. Childish 
games with letters amuse her, a rubber of 
whist for love, or a drive to nowhere and 
back of an afternoon. She is fond of a 
little company, too, but mighty scornful 
of our dinner parties, so that one effort, 
at least, is spared My Lady, who need not 
dine the neighbourhood for the sake of 
170 


Cousin Ann 

pleasing Cousin Ann. Cousin Ann prefers 
a quiet rubber with The Colonel for a 
partner, or a round game with the children 
before bed. 

It is a sad fact, but a true one, that The 
Colonel and Cousin Ann are sometimes 
frivolous together, and set the younger 
ones among us a bad example. A bad 
example, do I say? It is rather an edifying 
example of how the intercourse between 
man and woman may be rendered at once 
playful and dignified. Flirtation in their 
case is shorn of all vulgarity, and their 
grey heads impart an air of old-fashioned 
gallantry to the scene, which is becoming. 
They seem a piece with the china rose- 
bowls, and the odour of pot-pourri is their 
natural atmosphere. The Colonel has 
many old-world instincts, which blossom 
forth when Cousin Ann is there, and his 
use of bows and compliments is quite to 
her taste. They sit opposite each other 
171 


The House of Dornell 

in arm-chairs, bowing, smiling and ex- 
changing rapier thrusts of very polished 
wit, till The Colonel chokes on a bon-mot 
and gasps for breath. Both he and she are 
deaf, but as neither will own to the fact 
there is sometimes vast confusion in their 
intercourse. But always politeness; that 
never fails, and their dignity is such that 
we dare hardly smile. 

And it is not safe to smile when speak- 
ing to The Colonel about Cousin Ann, 
because he has a great respect for her, 
esteem he calls it, and would resent the 
least approach to flippancy at her expense. 
A monstrous pleasant woman, she is to 
him, and she admits The Colonel to be a 
most entertaining man. 

Cynthia bewilders her cousin. She seems 
to be in so many places at once, and the 
effect she produces is rather like that of 
a gusty wind. Breeziness is a quality 
Cousin Ann does not appreciate, especially 
172 


Cousin Ann 


in little girls, and she instinctively holds 
on her cap when Cynthia enters the room. 
It was not the custom for young ladies 
to be breezy when Cousin Ann was a girl, 
or to ruffle the air of a drawing-room with 
flying skirts. Little girls should be seen 
and not heard. Excellent precept! But 
Cynthia is both seen and heard in a 
variety of places, and with such rapidity 
of change as to make her seem ubiquitous. 
It is very upsetting for elderly ladies of 
strict views on propriety, but in spite of 
her faults, Cynthia has found favour in 
the eyes of her cousin, and besides a 
prayer-book and hymnal bound in Russia 
leather, Cousin Ann has given her a tur- 
quoise pendant. It was to have been a gar- 
net brooch, but it seemed a pity to break 
the set, so Cousin Ann has kept her 
garnets as a future legacy for a god- 
child. 

Cynthia hates being asked Bible ques- 
173 


The House of D or n ell 

tions on a Sunday afternoon, and regards 
many of Cousin Ann’s most cherished 
convictions as mere whims of a vexatious 
character, but for one reason she for- 
gives all else. Cousin Ann is kind to Mr. 
Stinkins, the dog misanthrope, the tailless 
object of Cynthia’s love, and what is more 
Mr. Stinkins responds. He appreciates 
dignity, and stately movements do not 
fluster him. He will wag himself when 
Cousin Ann speaks to him, and he always 
takes care not to sit on her dress. Cousin 
Ann calls him a nice dog, a very nice dog, 
which makes Cynthia blush from grati- 
tude. Indeed she would be altogether 
fond of Cousin Ann, were it not for the 
latter’s prejudice against The Kind One, 
whom she treats with extraordinary in- 
civility. The harmless, mooning Kind 
One; the frequenter of pine-woods; the 
smoker of innumerable pipes; it is strange 
how he has fallen into disgrace. Cousin 
i74 


Cousin Ann 

Ann becomes irritable at the very smell of 
his tobacco, although she does not object 
to smoking in others, and when he speaks 
to her she sniffs, and gives him tart replies. 
He is a polite creature, and the conduct 
of Cousin Ann pains him, so that he looks 
at her gently and sighs. That annoys her 
more than anything. She shuts up her 
lips and withdraws into her grandest, 
haughtiest manner; but whenever she sees 
him again she forgets to be grand, re- 
lapsing at once into human, palpable dis- 
pleasure. The Kind One is, as it were, a 
haunting plague from which her life is 
never free, and she cannot keep from think- 
ing of, or talking about, him. She pulls his 
character to pieces before My Lady, and 
deprecates the very qualities we like in 
him; in fact she goes out of her way to 
show that, whatever others may believe, 
The Kind One is, in truth, unworthy of 
our pity. My Lady says nothing in reply, 
i75 


The House of D or n ell 

because she does not agree with Cousin 
Ann, and because she shrinks from useless 
argument. Her face, however, is an index 
to her thoughts, and at the first chance she 
escapes, runs away, and leaves Cousin Ann 
shaking her earrings over other people’s 
folly. 

One of the little boys at Miss More- 
land’s school is a godson of Cousin Ann, 
who sometimes has him to Dornell for an 
afternoon, or goes to visit him at the white 
school-house, where she can also enjoy a 
long and confidential talk with Miss More- 
land. These are occasions of state in the 
lives of Miss Moreland and Mary McKie, 
when the china vases are filled with 
flowers, and all the home-made cordials 
appear with labels on the bottles, which 
adds considerably to their medicinal 
aspect. Cousin Ann refuses cordials, but 
she is very gracious to Mary McKie, so 
that the grim handmaid almost forgives 
176 


Cousin Ann 

her scorning of the currant-wine. What 
Miss Moreland and Cousin Ann talk 
about, I do not know; the pale godson can- 
not always suffice as a subject for con- 
versation, and I often puzzle myself in 
thinking of a common interest, which could 
appeal to both of them, and keep them 
busy in talk for hours at a time. Cousin 
Ann is fond of laying down the law to us, 
and we take her judgments meekly; but 
Miss Moreland is afraid of no one, and 
would never stoop to propitiate her visitor 
by polite acquiescence in views with which 
she disagreed. Then Miss Moreland can 
always appeal to Mary McKie for sup- 
port, and Mary would perjure her soul 
for the sake of loyalty. Against the com- 
bined forces of mistress and maid, Cousin 
Ann would find it difficult to contend; so, 
on the whole, I am inclined to think that 
she is humble with Miss Moreland as with 
no one else, and goes to the school-house 
177 


The House of D or n ell 

to renew her memories of childhood in an 
atmosphere she seldom feels elsewhere. 

At all events, there is a noticeable 
change in Cousin Ann when she returns 
from such a visit; a milder bearing for a 
while, a disposition to regard us all with 
softened looks, and to sigh when she meets 
the children. These symptoms are apt to 
embarrass us, they are so foreign to Cousin 
Ann; but they soon pass, and it is only 
needful that The Kind One should appear, 
to bring back again the well-known man- 
ner and the familiar atmosphere we 
breathe when she is present. 


178 


XVII 


HABITS AND CUSTOMS 

We are said to be creatures of habit; that 
is, we live by rule of thumb for our own 
convenience, and for the convenience of 
other folk. Originality is never looked 
upon with eyes quite friendly by man- 
kind in general, because the original tem- 
perament is forever interfering with the 
ruled course of ordinary lives. It would 
not signify if such a temperament moved 
only the possessor of it to cut capers away 
from the beaten track. It might be amus- 
ing to watch him capering; but unfor- 
tunately original impulse is very much 
like a stone dropped in the rut of our 
progress, and is apt to cause a jolt, if it 
does not quite upset us. 

At Dornell we regard with suspicion 
179 


The House of Dornell 

the appearance of a new habit, because 
we are afraid that it heralds a burst of 
originality, and because we have suffered 
from such outbursts in the past. A trifling 
habit unchecked, may grow into a custom, 
a firmly-established thing, an inconvenient 
excrescence on the highway of our lives. 
Therefore we are not allowed to assert our 
individuality by means of habits peculiar 
to ourselves, and all our customs are 
smoothed level, so that the wheels of life 
may roll over them without a jar. 

Habits and customs are related to one 
another, and yet there is a marked differ- 
ence in the treatment accorded to each; 
customs being respectable through an- 
tiquity, habits generally disreputable from 
associations. Thus it is a recognised cus- 
tom that the boys should go to tea with 
Caiman on the last Sunday of the holidays, 
but they may not eat cheese with a knife 
as he does. Custom in the house of Cair- 
180 


Habits and ' Customs 

nan ranks as a habit to be checked at Dor- 
nell. I confess to being perplexed, some- 
times, among the fine distinctions between 
customs and habits, and to my mind the 
knife and cheese habit might better be 
described as a dangerous innovation. But 
even harmless variations in our methods of 
conducting life are not encouraged. We 
are conservative in all our ideas, and for 
every situation there is a correct form of 
procedure, a certain etiquette to be ob- 
served that ought not to be varied. There 
is a proper ceremony for the first evening 
when the boys return from school, particu- 
lar acts and phrases that always mark these 
occasions, and the bringing in of a single 
new incident would savour of revolution. 
The effect we wish to produce is that of 
loving welcome; the effect we do produce 
is that of receiving voyagers from an ex- 
pedition full of hardships and privations. 
We feed them as we would revive sailors 
1 8 1 


The House of D or n el l 

taken from a drifting raft in mid-ocean. 
It is tacitly conceded that the boys have 
suffered in some dim and nameless way, 
and we give ourselves the air of rescuers 
with a nice mixture of joy and sympathy. 
The boys are perfectly happy at school, 
but, like dogs, they respond to our com- 
passionate reception, and are pleased to 
be called poor things. The meal pro- 
vided for them is accepted as a just recom- 
pense after much starvation. 

Customs extend all through the holidays, 
time-honoured customs that the coming of 
The Stink Machine upset most woefully. 
It is a malodorous innovation, a disturbing 
element in the midst of our peaceful do- 
main; but we are growing used to it, and 
soon shall lose the inclination to run side- 
long into bushes when we hear it snorting 
up the drive. Some day The Stink Machine 
will rank among our most venerable insti- 
tutions, the smell of it will blend naturally 
182 


Habits and Customs 

with the perfumes of the garden, and its 
snorting with the murmur of the wind 
through the pine-trees. In the meanwhile 
we have other institutions that not even 
a motor-bicycle can destroy, and all our 
carefully preserved customs seem to cul- 
minate on the last Sunday of the holidays 
in a sort of pageant, or procession, of do- 
mestic rites. On that day the boys belong 
to their father, who takes them away from 
the family and talks to them behind closed 
doors. The thought of leaving home de- 
presses The Baa-lamb and The Beloved, 
so that they are in trim to hear a lecture, 
and words seem to sink deep then, as they 
never do at other seasons. Reports from 
school are brought out and read to them, 
with comments, and The Baa-lamb sighs 
to think that just those subjects for which 
he has least aptitude are the ones his father 
appreciates most. The Beloved cannot be 
criticised too freely. The process would 

183 


The House of Dornell 

introduce an atmosphere of real grief, and 
an improving discourse would be ruined 
by the need to comfort him. It is a solemn 
interview while it lasts, but afterwards 
comes relaxation in the form of tea with 
Caiman. Caiman has a very soft heart 
toward little boys who are going back to 
school, and he is one of those rare per- 
sons who can sympathise without causing 
one to feel foolish. There is nothing 
mawkish about Caiman, and as a host he 
has a delightful way of making himself 
a butt for laughter by courting accidents 
and greeting them with innocent surprise. 
I have an idea he plans these accidents 
long before his tea-party, and that the mis- 
haps with kettle or eggs have been re- 
hearsed in private. The same mishaps 
have been repeated many times; they are 
a part of Caiman’s entertainment, and like 
the familiar clown jests of our childhood, 
they preserve an everlasting virtue of mirth. 

184 


Habits and Customs 

To meet again a well-known jest is to 
recognise an old friend whom we wish to 
stay unchanged, so that we may never miss 
the homely comfort of his familiar talk. 
Change comes in spite of us, but while we 
can we stick to those customs that have 
grown pleasant to us from long association. 
It is enough to know that such a thing 
as change exists, and that it works some 
alteration in us year by year, but we do 
not seek it, or try to hasten its coming 
here at Dornell. The notion of growing 
up is sad when we see The Beloved; the 
notion of growing old is sadder when we 
think of ourselves; but all the same we 
labour for the future by pulling weeds in 
the garden, or uprooting evil habits from 
our lives. 

Bad habits spring as naturally as weeds. 
Goodness never becomes a habit, but is 
a constant struggle to maintain an all- 
round excellence, which if attained would 


The House of Dornell 

mean great dulness in a human being, just 
as excessive neatness takes away some 
charm from an old garden. The chief 
reason for objecting to habits is that they 
generally point to moral slackness in one 
direction or another, and convenience has 
nothing to do with their right or wrong 
aspect in the eyes of authority. Thus The 
Baa-lamb is not allowed to lick his thumb 
when turning over a page, although his 
staple literature consists of catalogues from 
the manufacturers of Stink Machines, which 
are always printed on such thin paper that 
a wet thumb is of the greatest assistance 
in getting at their contents. With a wet 
thumb The Baa-lamb and Caiman gather 
information swiftly, but even as a time- 
saving device, or short cut to knowledge, 
the practice is condemned. It is said to 
give a bad impression, and to leave one. 

Nothing is so annoying as to have our 
most convenient practices condemned as 
1 86 


Habits and Customs 

bad habits; but there is consolation in the 
fact that those who correct us are often 
worse offenders than ourselves. The Kind 
One sets a good example by correcting 
nobody, and that is one of the reasons why 
his company is soothing. When Cousin 
Ann asks him how he can permit the chil- 
dren to violate good manners in the way 
he does, he remarks that it is all right, 
which irritates Cousin Ann considerably. 
It would be a case of the pot calling the 
kettle black, he thinks, but the duty of 
posing as a censor is pointed out to him 
so often that he has twinges of conscience 
whenever Cousin Ann finds him with the 
children. I suffer in a like manner, for 
Cousin Ann reproves me just as she re- 
proves The Kind One, and I dare not tell 
her that the habit of fault-finding is the 
worst a man or woman can contract. 

But after all, what does it matter? The 
ways we have please us, and they are very 
187 


The House of D or n el l 

innocent. If I once introduced bad habits, 
they have become good customs now, and 
the very bad ones, such as idling away a 
summer afternoon beneath the trees, or 
being late for prayers, I have kept entirely 
to myself. Yes, Cousin Ann. Shake your 
head at me as you will; it matters not. 
Some day you will, perhaps, read this 
book, and looking back at Dornell and us, 
as we were when you tried so hard to cure 
our faults, you will see the very things 
of which you most disapproved through 
the same golden haze that falls between 
my eyes and the past, so that they will 
appear beautiful as virtues. 


1 88 


XVIII 


MYSTERIES 

Life would be nothing without its mys- 
teries; little or great, they form the spice 
of existence, the foundation and essence 
of romance. There are no dark secrets 
connected with Dornell ; not even the mys- 
tery of a ghost, and the shapes of memory 
that our eyes create are homely, not fan- 
tastic. Still, we have some mysteries 
among ourselves, things that keep us on 
the alert, like terriers, to sniff out what one 
member of the family hides from another. 

Some of these are legitimate secrets, 
which we expect toward the season of 
Christmas, or in the neighbourhood of a 
birthday. The treasure-cupboard holds 
numerous tokens of such guarded mys- 
teries that were burdens on the mind be- 
189 


The House of D or n ell 

fore the joyful moment of revelation. 
They were recognised secrets, privileged 
bits of deception, bursting from their hid- 
ing-places to make a grand surprise on 
anniversaries. Cynthia’s kettle-holder is a 
memorable example. It was a secret for 
many weeks before one Christmas, even 
after some of us had sat upon the needle, 
and when we raked it out from arm-chair 
seats we still pretended not to be aware of 
it. A piece of tapestry it was said to be, 
a counterpane, a chest-protector; anything 
but the kettle-holder that its shape pro- 
claimed. It was one of the finest secrets 
possible, and a monument to mark the 
dulness of our intellects. 

The boys possess an advantage over 
Cynthia in the matter of secrets. They 
can make their surprises at school, without 
fear of having them prematurely revealed, 
and their minds are thus free to concoct 
artistic ways of presentation, and novel 
190 


Mysteries 

hiding-places where their gifts will be 
discovered unexpectedly. The Baa-lamb 
put the model of a brass screw among 
cigars in a box. It was intended to sur- 
prise his father, and the result quite came 
up to expectation. On Christmas Day, we 
look for tokens of good-will among our 
clothes, under our plates, or in our hats. 
To present their offerings thus saves the 
boys the least suspicion of sentiment and 
the embarrassment of thanks. 

These mysteries form a class by them- 
selves, and are sustained with right good 
will by everybody. They require some 
small external help to make them a suc- 
cess, a blindness now and then, a touch 
of dramatic feeling at the right moment to 
crown the enterprise. But other mysteries 
there are that have not an aspect so jocund, 
and about which we speculate in our 
private hearts with a frowning brow and 
real perplexity. These are riddles that 

i 9 i 


The House of Dornell 

try our patience, and that time alone can 
solve. Nearly every one of us has a little 
personal mystery, a spice to make us in- 
teresting, a problem to render us vexatious. 
My Lady holds more secrets in her keep- 
ing than any one I know. It comes nat- 
urally to tell her what we strive to hide 
from others, and she never shows undue 
responsiveness, even when a tale has 
touched her heart. She has the quality 
that goes to make a true confidant: the 
gift for receiving much and showing little. 
We know that our secrets are safe with 
her, and if she is silent while we babble 
them we are still sure she comprehends. 
To read between the lines, to fill in blank 
pauses correctly, is a special gift that be- 
longs to her, and makes just the confidant 
we need. 

Yet she can laugh at fancies. At my 
vision of a wood-nymph in Tempe, for 
example, although I can see that she is 
192 


Mysteries 

not quite easy in this attitude. She slips 
away from the subject, as though I had 
touched upon a secret of her own. The 
mystery she loves best is the romantic one 
concerning The Kind One’s life, and that 
is why she feels distressed when Cousin 
Ann would strip it of all beauty and ren- 
der it a naked, foolish thing. But then 
again, Cousin Ann has her secrets. She 
has never told us why a visit to Miss 
Moreland should send her back so chas- 
tened in spirit, or what she thinks of when 
the pensive moods are on her. If you 
asked, she would tell you that all secrets 
were wrong, and that we should hide noth- 
ing, especially from our nearest relatives. 
This may be, for all I know, an invitation; 
but nobody would confide in Cousin Ann, 
because her sense of duty and right would 
surely compel her to speak candidly. She 
would take a common-sense view of a 
situation, and quote the Bible against vain 
i93 


The House of D or n ell 

imaginings. A wood-nymph in Tempe 
might savour of human naughtiness to her, 
and she might put a concrete form of evil 
upon a pretty fancy. Spirits with her are 
all angels — or devils — and the flitting 
shapes we spy in woods are but heathen 
notions borrowed from mythology. Little 
Cupid on the summer-house is merely a 
leaden ornament to her, the significance 
of Cupid a theme on which she will not 
dwell. Therefore I never talk to Cousin 
Ann about the pagan fancies that delight 
me in the garden, nor do I ask her to share 
my dreams by the burn-side in Tempe. 
With My Lady it is different. She knows 
that I have clothed Dornell with whimsi- 
cal conceits, and that all kinds of strange 
and mystic things lurk in the thickets 
where the stream descends; but if she 
thinks me foolish, she never tries to drag 
my mysteries to the light or strip them of 
romance. 


194 


Mysteries 

Tempe is the one exception. She takes 
pains to scatter my fancies there; and yet 
Tempe draws her as it draws me, so that 
we often meet beside the stepping-stones, 
or on the path among the bracken. You 
can walk to Miss Moreland’s school that 
way, and when I meet her, it is always to 
Miss Moreland’s that My Lady has been. 
The Sunday visits are being dropped, and 
she goes alone through Tempe, or in com- 
pany with Cousin Ann. Another mystery 
here, surely, with Miss Moreland’s white 
house as a centre. There seems to be a subtle 
spell that attracts My Lady and Cousin 
Ann to Miss Moreland’s dwelling, and 
the circumstance puzzles me, because they 
are both so different, and Miss Moreland 
is so unlike either of them. This is a 
problem that I would willingly solve, but 
no enlightenment comes to me, since My 
Lady will not even speak of Tempe. It 
seems that Dornell is gathering to itself 
i95 


The House of D or n el l 

new associations that are not all of peace. 
Something in the air suggests changes, and 
I dread change in this quiet haunt of 
mine. But time has a wonderful power 
to mellow and beautify, and perhaps the 
added memories will prove not less sweet 
than those I dream of now. 

The thought of mysteries sets me specu- 
lating. Has Caiman secrets that he 
guards? Or the scratchers in their leafy 
walks? Robert, I know, cherishes many 
hidden things; but they are mostly of 
iron or wood, and a heap of rusty tools 
lends rather a prose effect than one of 
mystery to the dim recesses of a laurel 
brake. The only mysteries Caiman culti- 
vates are those connected with Stink 
Machines, and these suffice his needs. But 
you can always break up a Stink Machine 
with a sledge-hammer, if its waywardness 
grows too intricate, or you can unscrew it 
and examine its inside; but with these 
196 


Mysteries 

human mysteries time and patient waiting 
alone can solve them. Time and patience; 
of the one I have an ample store, of the 
other I learn from Caiman. Still, al- 
though I am resigned to the conduct of my 
friends, I hate to be baffled by that little 
burn in Tempe. It knows exactly why 
My Lady takes the path by the stepping- 
stones when on her way to see Miss More- 
land, and it has seen others in the glen who 
hide from me. It dives into the under- 
growth to laugh, and when I wade up- 
stream, through the hole in the garden 
wall, and into the dusky tunnel of its 
course, it receives me coldly. The next 
time I shall take Cynthia with me, and we 
will violate the sanctuary with laughter of 
our own. 

I sometimes wish that I were like The 
Kind One. The unexplained goings to 
and fro disturb him not at all. The pine 
slopes are mystery enough for him, and 
197 


The House of Dornell 

all that puzzles his brain is why Cousin 
Ann should treat him with such severity. 
I am jealous of The Kind One, because 
he is robbing me of Cynthia. She, little 
feminine wretch, has scented out a story 
of love, and being calmly engaged to me 
is not enough for her. The condition has 
lost piquancy through long establishment, 
and The Kind One’s state has for her the 
charm of novelty. She even deserts the 
dogs, which are not taken to the woods 
when she and The Kind One go rambling, 
because repeated callings to errant Mr. 
Stinkins would interfere with the spirit 
of their intercourse. The dogs remain 
with me, puzzled as I am, and resenting 
what they cannot understand. The Be- 
loved, the dogs, and I : we make a com- 
pany of aggrieved spirits. The Beloved 
is hurt because The Baa-lamb, his close 
companion, has gone scouring the roads on 
a Stink Machine, leaving him behind, the 
198 


Mysteries 

dogs are offended on account of Cynthia’s 
neglect, and I am disconsolate because 
everybody seems to have a secret except 
myself. Indeed I could find it in my 
heart to turn misanthrope, like Mr. Stink- 
ins, and only his entire unapproachability 
prevents me from seeking his right paw 
of fellowship. Mr. Stinkins will have 
none of me; the others have their own 
affairs. Come then, Beloved, let us walk 
down to Caiman’s yard and sit in his work- 
shop a while. He will tell us the story of 
the careless bombardier, a simple tale, and 
one easily comprehended. 


199 


XIX 


CUPID TRIUMPHANT 

IT came upon us as no very great surprise 
when My Lady mentioned that Miss 
Moreland had an authoress staying with 
her. It seemed natural and in keeping 
with the scholastic atmosphere of the 
white house, and the name called up a 
dull vision of one with shortish hair and 
spectacles, an intellectual being remote 
from our sphere. For some reason or 
other, we connected her with the class of 
book that combines amusement with in- 
struction, and made her in our minds a 
reincarnation of Miss Edgeworth. We 
could not connect her with anything so 
light as fiction, because she dwelt in the 
very citadel of learning, and under the 


200 


Cupid Triumphant 

eye of Miss Moreland who condemns 
novels. 

Cousin Ann claimed her as a friend, 
too, and spoke of her as a good compan- 
ion for the pale godson, which confirmed 
our notion that the authoress must be both 
elderly and prim. She had evidently im- 
pressed Cousin Ann, and touched her, for 
we traced the subduing effects of a visit 
to the white house to the authoress, and 
not to Miss Moreland’s influence. A 
friend of Cousin Ann could never be very 
interesting, we thought, and it was only 
when My Lady began to speak of her, and 
of having asked her to Dornell, that my 
curiosity was roused. An authoress, even 
a reincarnation of Miss Edgeworth, cannot 
be a specially formidable guest to enter- 
tain, and yet My Lady was plainly dis- 
turbed in her mind, and anxious at the 
prospect. A sort of shyness seemed to 
affect her, and as My Lady is well enough 


201 


The House of Dornell 

informed to hold her own with most 
authoresses, I wondered what the reason 
could be. I smelt a mystery, and alto- 
gether failed to solve it when driven to 
ask questions. I was told to wait, and so 
I waited, cynically as one who expects 
nothing. 

But if My Lady shunned talk of Miss 
Moreland’s visitor, Cousin Ann flaunted 
her before us all day: as an example of 
industry, as her friend, and as a protegee 
whom she regarded as her own through 
right of discovery. She used to talk about 
her when The Kind One was in the room, 
and he was always sympathetic, instead of 
appearing struck by his own imperfections, 
or contrasting them dismally with a 
woman’s excellence. Cousin Ann could 
make nothing of The Kind One. He was 
ready to admire the authoress when her 
virtues were pointed out to him, and to 
smile, or sigh with charming grace; but it 


202 


Cupid Triumphant 
never entered his head that Cousin Ann 
was pointing out an example for his bene- 
fit or confusion, and his serenity was never 
ruffled. The only person who seemed 
distressed was My Lady. When Cousin 
Ann approached her favourite topic, she 
would shoot a quick glance at The Kind 
One, and then fix her eyes upon the floor, 
while a sudden colour rose in her face. I 
was sure there was some mystery con- 
nected with this writing woman, and I 
came near to guessing the truth, once or 
twice, though My Lady would tell me 
nothing. 

Miss Moreland’s guest was something 
else than a fine example of literary devo- 
tion in My Lady’s eyes; something in the 
nature of a romance heroine, whom she 
was shy of mentioning in ordinary talk. 
By degrees I came to identify the authoress 
with my wood-nymph in Tempe, and at 
once she changed her form from elderly 
203 


The House of D or n ell 

sedateness to a lively and becoming one 
of youth. My Lady had met a pretty girl 
in Tempe, an authoress of the brightest 
fiction, and had straightway plunged into 
a romantic sort of friendship, worthy of 
Cynthia, rather than her mother. That 
is the conclusion I came to, and My Lady’s 
shyness I put down to a kind of shame 
she felt at having been betrayed into an 
impulse so juvenile. She wanted The 
Kind One, her other embodiment of ro- 
mance, to meet the authoress, and there- 
fore she had asked her to Dornell. I came 
near to guessing the truth, as I have said 
before. 

The Baa-lamb and The Beloved looked 
upon the visit of an authoress as a dis- 
tinct infringement of their holiday rights; 
because folk who make books stand in the 
same class as schoolmasters, and pro- 
fessors, whose proper place is in a lecture- 
room. The Stink Machine is a boon to 


204 


Cupid Triumphant 

The Baa-lamb on an emergency; he can 
fly away on it, whereas The Beloved and 
Cynthia can only hide, which they prom- 
ised to do when the authoress came to tea. 
The Kind One said he would take Cynthia 
with him, to the pine-woods; but My 
Lady, with a look that apologised for the 
untruth, told him that Cynthia was al- 
ready engaged to go with me. I met 
My Lady’s eyes fairly, and then, The Kind 
One having sauntered off, she put her 
hands on mine, and gave me the whole 
truth. I had almost guessed it, but was 
wrong in one particular. The Kind One 
and this girl who wrote books had met 
before, and their lives were like those of 
Dick and Maisie in “ The Light that 
Failed.” My Lady, knowing two stories, 
had joined one with the other, and now 
had intervened to bring about a happy 
ending. It was an idea worthy of her, 
an experiment which few besides herself 
205 


The House of D or n ell 

would have dared to try, and if Maisie 
helped her it was done adroitly, so that 
she never knew. As for me, when she 
explained the wonderful secret, I could 
only press her hands and vow she was the 
dearest woman in the world. 

Cynthia had not been for a walk with 
me for some time. Her attention had been 
altogether given to The Kind One, and 
now that we were together she assumed 
an injured air, as though I, not she, had 
been unfaithful. She firmly believed The 
Kind One to be a victim, and that even 
then he was pining for her company, of 
which she unwillingly deprived him. 
However, it was not her fault, and after 
a while she found my society a relief from 
a prolonged course of pine-woods and 
recitation. At any rate, she cheered up 
and we made a holiday of it with our tea 
in a basket between us. We came into 
Tempe by a round-about track, and pad- 
206 


Cupid Triumphant 

died in the burn at the stepping-stones. 
I could have vowed that the burn was 
still laughing at me, but the secret was 
out now, and Cynthia’s bare feet set the 
ripples dancing to a new tune. Later on, 
we climbed the path that leads on to the 
hillside above Dornell, and in the shadow 
of a big rock we sat down to eat our tea. 
No picnic can have a right flavour with- 
out a fire, so I gathered sticks and made 
a smoky blaze to please Cynthia, who had 
learned to claim service from men-folk 
since last we went picnicking together. It 
was a feminine development I charged to 
the influence of The Kind One. 

The spot we had chosen for our encamp- 
ment was high up the hill, where we could 
look over the pine-tops, like an undulating 
sea of green, to the river and the far-off 
mountains, just beginning to turn dark 
against an evening sky. Almost at our 
feet lay Dornell, and a peep of its chim- 
207 


The House of D or n el l 

neys set me speculating. The Kind One 
had met the authoress by now, and recog- 
nised her to his joy or sorrow.. Perhaps 
he was on his way to the pine-woods in 
despair, having dashed a romance to 
atoms, and would shortly burst upon Cyn- 
thia and me to the ruin of our pleasant 
outing. Such an event would have been 
quite in keeping with what we knew of The 
Kind One’s ways, and when I thought of 
all My Lady’s planning for his good, 
I marked a stone to roll upon his head 
should he appear. 

Cynthia, as we sat, grew pensive; the 
place held memories for her, and I felt she 
regarded me as an intruder, in spite of my 
diligence in tending a smoky fire. That 
smoke rose in a thin column between us, 
making a sort of dividing curtain, through 
which our faces appeared to one another 
dim and indistinct. I knew that Cynthia’s 
mind was wandering in the same direction 
208 


Cupid Triumphant 

as my own, and yet she would have denied 
it stoutly, had I taxed her with a longing 
for The Kind One. We drank our tea — 
or milk, was it? — in silence, and by and by 
the west began to glow with red, which 
deepened as the sun dropped down, till 
the spirit of evening spread abroad among 
the pine-stems, and over the still land- 
scape. Its influence touched both of us 
where we sat, high above the world on 
the crest of the hill. A squirrel came to 
investigate our presence, but Cynthia made 
no move; a hare loped across the path, 
and still she took no notice. Then, just to 
try her, I began a line from “ The 
Blessed Damozel.” Cynthia reminds me, 
sometimes, of The Blessed Damozel, and 
the poem is a favourite one of hers. She 
was taught it by The Kind One, verse by 
verse, on these very pine slopes, and I 
made my voice like his when he recites. 
One line was quite enough. Cynthia 
209 


The House of D or n ell 
jumped up and the spell of her musing 
was broken. 

Whatever had happened at Dornell was 
past by now, for it was late, and I felt 
that we might safely return home; so, after 
failing to take Cynthia’s hand, I descended 
the hill in silence by her side. As we 
went along, a rising anger against The 
Kind One took possession of me, because 
it seemed impossible that My Lady’s ro- 
mantic venture had proved a success. She 
was dealing with a mule, not a man, and 
one could not even be sure that he would 
suffer properly. He deserved to suffer 
both for his ingratitude to My Lady, and 
for having estranged Cynthia from me. 
I felt that Cousin Ann was right in her 
opinion of him, and wondered how we 
could have disagreed with her. He was 
probably incapable of strong feeling, an 
inveterate idler on whom sympathy and 
help were totally wasted. My Lady, 


210 


Cupid Triumphant 

Maisie, Cynthia were all too good for 
him. He was no use to anybody; he was 
an impostor, a 

Suddenly I was roused by Cynthia’s 
hand in mine, and we stopped. Not a 
moment too soon, for there below us, only 
a few yards distant, stood The Kind One. 
In a ray of sunlight that fell slantingly 
between the tree-trunks he stood, clothed 
in a sort of superhuman glory, and his arm 
was round the waist of a woman. 

Cynthia pulled me away, and as we 
took a circuitous route for home she still 
held my hand. Soon we came into Tempe, 
and the burn called us to follow it, called 
and laughed, and I laughed too, because 
the world seemed a merry place. Cynthia 
looked at me reproachfully; I had for- 
gotten a duty; but remembering it then, I 
kissed her. 


2 1 1 


XX 


FAREWELL 

So, Little Cupid, you have triumphed. 
After a long time of waiting on your 
perch above the summer-house, you at 
last see two smitten victims at your feet. 
Love has a part in every story; even these 
simple annals of Dornell are incomplete 
without the intervention of the love-god 
and his arrows. Cupid takes the whole 
credit of a happy ending to himself, and I 
can see he does by the extra touch of 
vanity his pose betrays, although he still 
pretends to take a careful aim at some- 
body in Caiman’s yard. What a trans- 
parent bit of affectation, Little Cupid! 
You cannot mislead us, and you know 
quite well that Caiman is nothing to you. 


212 


Farewell 


It is only your perversity that makes you 
turn your back on us now, just as though 
you had not faced about for a shot when 
you thought nobody was looking. You 
hit The Kind One on a summer afternoon, 
and finished him off, as a hunter does a 
wounded buck that he has tracked for 
many hours. 

But all the same, the pine-woods, not 
your summer-house, saw the end, and while 
a pair of lovers stood upon the hillside, 
the scratchers were weeding the plots 
about your own domain. Yes, you may 
plume yourself as you will, but the sum- 
mer-house has lost its reputation, and you 
remain a guardian of emptiness. Yet 
we owe you a debt of gratitude, little god, 
for bringing all things straight, and for 
adding one more link to the golden chain 
of memories about Dornell. You scorn 
us, but you are a benefactor, a naked 
godling of infinite power, who has caused 
213 


The House of D o r n e 1 1 

a cloud to roll away from the blue sky, 
and the world to smile again. Wherefore 
we thank you, Cupid. 

My Lady is never tired of going 
through the history of her plots and plans 
for the happiness of others. She likes to 
take us apart, one by one, and to relate the 
incidents of this, her great romance, with 
a gentle triumph that wins all our hearts. 
She has been Cupid’s ally from beginning 
to end, and I would rather give the praise 
to her than to the supercilious imp upon 
the summer-house. A little love-making 
imparts a wonderful spice to existence, 
and the folk at Dornell have a new interest 
in their lives. Maisie, the authoress, has 
joined our circle of intimate friends, and 
whenever she appears a flutter manifests 
itself among the least impressionable of 
them. She is regarded as a child who has 
done well, and the tender feeling we have 
for her is shown in gifts of flowers, so 
214 


Farewell 

that she always has a fresh blossom pinned 
in her dress. 

Cousin Ann was inclined to retire upon 
her dignity, at first, and to mount a lofty 
platform of state as a sort of salve to her 
consciousness of having been woefully 
blind. She does not like to own that all 
this has come upon her as a vast surprise, 
nor does she altogether relish being ousted 
from a front-rank place; but the influence 
of joy was too much for her, and so she came 
down again, shaking her head at our weak- 
ness, and her own. The Colonel, too, was 
not quite satisfied when next he visited us. 
Love to him is all kissing and cooing in a 
summer-house, and the fact that these lovers 
seemed never to kiss or coo, added to the 
fact that the summer-house key was lost, 
disordered his ideas for a while. But it 
is not in his nature to allow his jests to be 
spoilt by the inconsistent behaviour of his 
friends, and before long he had new jokes 
215 


The House of D or n ell 

to chuckle over, which pleased him every 
bit as well as the old ones, and which The 
Kind One finds just as embarrassing. 

Caiman wonders why The Kind One is 
so little changed since the glorious thing 
befell him, though what sort of transfor- 
mation he expected I cannot guess; 
something in the way of a fancy tie or 
waistcoat, perhaps. In the experience of 
Caiman, Cupid appears as somewhat of 
a blusterer, no doubt, and to him the win- 
ning of a woman was generally connected 
with a fight or two. The subtility of feel- 
ing without action is not easily under- 
stood by a man who has been accustomed 
to see fists used as arguments, and trouble 
drowned in beer. He could have compre- 
hended, and sympathised with, The Kind 
One under the influence of love and drink, 
but the comfort to be drawn from pine- 
woods is a flight beyond the simple imag- 
inings of Caiman. The Kind One wears 
216 


Farewell 


no obvious expression of triumph, no out- 
ward sign of rejoicing, and he smokes the 
same old pipe as formerly. No wonder 
Caiman is puzzled, for it is only those 
who watch and know him well who can 
detect the change wrought in him by love. 

Miss Moreland calls herself a fairy god- 
mother, but still remains practical in the 
ordinary affairs of life, which is fortunate 
for her school, as Mary McKie can think 
of nothing else except weddings and joy- 
bells. She sings uncouth ditties in the 
kitchen, rattling her pots and pans the 
while, till a tramp appears for the usual 
dole of soup, when she calms her own 
feelings by soundly rating him. All the 
women folk smile upon The Kind One, 
and give him advice. He is very interest- 
ing to them, to Miss Moreland, Mary 
McKie and Cousin Ann. My Lady, who 
has done most for him, is now thrust into 
the background by the stronger-minded of 
217 


1 


T h e House of D or n ell 
her sex, and she is not in the least jealous. 
It is enough for her that everything has 
come right, and that the two persons most 
deeply concerned in these events have 
spoken to her from their hearts. She 
wants no more ; more would embarrass her, 
and so she stands apart, satisfied with the 
knowledge that her romance has pros- 
pered. 

As for me; these happenings have given 
me back Cynthia, on which account I 
feel glad with the rest of them, and can 
add my smile to those I see about me. 
Cynthia has returned to her old allegiance, 
and the pensive moods have given place 
to a refreshed activity, which has already 
left its mark upon her knees. The 
familiar scratches have returned; the 
bramble bushes seem to have sharpened 
their thorns in an interval of waiting, and 
the angles of Cynthia are not more 
rounded than they used to be, when she 
218 


Farewell 


sits upon my chest. The Baa-lamb and 
The Beloved recognise their sister again; 
she was as a stranger for a time; but now 
she has fought them both, and they feel 
that she is of the family once more. 

Love rings down the curtain on this 
little stage of mine, and the moment draws 
near when I shall bid you farewell. Per- 
haps we shall meet again; who knows? 
But with the triumph of Cupid a pause, 
at least, is clearly due. At Dornell the 
pleasant days succeed each other, just as 
they did before I wrote of them, and the 
seasons bring changing colours to the fields 
and garden. The charm of the whole 
remains unaltered throughout the year, and 
I remain, an idler irreclaimable, in the 
midst of a well-loved land. Little Cupid 
on the summer-house, is this a sort of love 
you understand? I think not, because there 
is no triumph in it for such as you. So 
thought The Kind One, once upon a time, 
219 


The House of Dornell 

but he — Little Cupid, I bow to you, only 
spare me torture when you shoot! 

Even as I write, it is summer at Dor- 
nell. The trailing roses on the bank near 
Caiman’s yard are pink with blossom, and 
the placid workers scratch with wooden 
rakes about the lawns, as I scratch with 
a pen on paper, in tranquil mood, soothed 
by the touch of an old-world atmosphere. 
It matters not if these pages come from the 
smoke of a busy town, or are penned on 
the tossing highway of the sea. The 
breath of Dornell is in my nostrils, and my 
fancy makes a bridge to span the gulf 
of time or space between us. I have but 
to close my eyes to see the gracious sweep 
of lawn and fields toward the river, to see 
the burn slipping from the shades of 
Tempe, and to find anew those friends 
who made my dream-land human. Over 
the grassy slopes and flower-beds Little 
Cupid tilts a rounded chin, and in the 


220 


Farewell 


light of sunset his nakedness is blushing. 
Pink Cupid on a nut-brown thatch! Fare- 
well, guardian of an empty summer-house! 
I have written mockingly of you, small god- 
ling, but, of a truth, I love you in my heart. 
Some day, we may come to a better under- 
standing, and meanwhile bear me no malice. 

So fades Little Cupid in a rosy light, 
and if he seem to you somewhat of an 
insignificant deity, I would have you 
remember that the theme of love has 
drifted into my garden only by accident, 
and that down among the lily-beds, and 
on the broad green walk, there are but 
Cynthia and The Baa-lamb running races 
past the sun-dial. And what humour 
prompted me to write about these things? 
Just the humour that prompts one to stir 
with the hand a bowl of dried rose-leaves. 
The scent recalls the odour of past sum- 
mers, and thus, among the flowers that are 
as yet unwithered, I bid you adieu. 


221 







































































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